Frequency of occurrence and concreteness ratings of homograph meanings

Wollen, Keith A.; Cox, Steven D.; Coahran, Margaret M.; Shea, Daniel S.; Kirby, Robert F.

doi:10.3758/bf03208319

Cited by 35 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…There is the over-all probability of the homograph meaning itself, which has been referred to as its dominant and subordinate meanings. For the sentences used herein, these are fairly well known, based on several published normative studies (Chapman et al, 1964;Kausler and Kollasch, 1970;Nelson et al, 1980;Wollen et al, 1980;Onifer and Swinney, 1981;Gorfein et al, 1982). Thus we can refer confidently to dominant versus subordinate sentences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sentence-ending word (adjective/verb) was always congruent with the noun, and in the case of homographs constrained its meaning as either dominant or subordinate. Dominant meanings had probabilities of usage approximately three times greater than subordinate meanings (Chapman et al, 1964;Kausler and Kollasch, 1970;Nelson et al, 1980;Wollen et al, 1980;Onifer and Swinney, 1981;Gorfein et al, 1982).…”

Section: Sentence Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Semantic bias, homograph comprehension, and event-related potentials in schizophrenia

Salisbury

Shenton

Nestor³

et al. 2002

Clinical Neurophysiology

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Objectives-It is controversial whether a semantic processing bias for strong associates is present in schizophrenia, and unknown whether the language abnormalities observed in schizophrenia can be attributed to dysfunctions early or late in cognitive processing. Combined behavioral and eventrelated potential (ERP) data can indicate the nature and timing of such abnormalities.Methods-Sensibility judgements of dominant and subordinate homograph sentences were measured in 12 schizophrenia patients and 13 normal controls. ERPs were recorded to the disambiguating sentence-ending word.Results-All subjects showed greatest misinterpretation of subordinate homograph sentences, but schizophrenia patients particularly misinterpreted these sentence types. For control subjects, subordinate homograph sentences that were classified as nonsensical showed greater N400 than those classified as sensible. By contrast, the N400 of patients was large, regardless of the sensibility judgement -patients' brains initially responded to all subordinate sentences as if nonsensical. These data are consonant with a semantic bias. However, the patients' N400 to dominant homograph sentence endings was also larger than that of controls, a finding not consonant with a semantic bias. Conclusions-The behavioral results indicate a selective comprehension abnormality in schizophrenia dependent on the content of verbal memory. The ERP results suggest a pervasive contextual memory failure. A semantic activation decay model is proposed to explain these results.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sentence Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic bias, homograph comprehension, and event-related potentials in schizophrenia

Salisbury

Shenton

Nestor³

et al. 2002

Clinical Neurophysiology

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“…One popular method for estimating dominance is via the classification of the free associates generated for a given homonym on the basis of the meaning of the word to which they are related (Geis & Winograd, 1974;Gilhooly & Logie, 1980a, 1980bGorfein, Viviani, & Leddo, 1982;Kausler & Kollasch, 1970;Mirman et al, 2010;Nelson, McEvoy, Walling, & Wheeler, 1980;Twilley et al, 1994), which is related to similar methods of classifying generated definitions (Warren, Bresnick, & Green, 1977), generated sentences (Wollen, Cox, Coahran, Shea, & Kirby, 1980), or sentence completions (Yates, 1978). These methods involve two steps: (1) Participants are provided with an ambiguous word (e.g., BANK) and generate an associate (or other similar response; e.g., MONEY), and (2) a separate group of raters classify these responses on the basis of their intuitions regarding the meanings to which these associates are related (e.g., the <financial> vs. < edge of a river> meanings of BANK).…”

Section: Issues With Existing Norming Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

eDom: Norming software and relative meaning frequencies for 544 English homonyms

2012

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Words that are homonyms-that is, for which a single written and spoken form is associated with multiple, unrelated interpretations, such as COMPOUND, which can denote an or a meaning-are an invaluable class of items for studying word and discourse comprehension. When using homonyms as stimuli, it is critical to control for the relative frequencies of each interpretation, because this variable can drastically alter the empirical effects of homonymy. Currently, the standard method for estimating these frequencies is based on the classification of free associates generated for a homonym, but this approach is both assumption-laden and resourcedemanding. Here, we outline an alternative norming methodology based on explicit ratings of the relative meaning frequencies of dictionary definitions. To evaluate this method, we collected and analyzed data in a norming study involving 544 English homonyms, using the eDom norming software that we developed for this purpose. Dictionary definitions were generally sufficient to exhaustively cover word meanings, and the methods converged on stable norms with fewer data and less effort on the part of the experimenter. The predictive validity of the norms was demonstrated in analyses of lexical decision data from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445-459, 2007), and from Armstrong and Plaut (Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, [2223][2224][2225][2226][2227][2228] 2011). On the basis of these results, our norming method obviates relying on the unsubstantiated assumptions involved in estimating relative meaning frequencies on the basis of classification of free associates. Additional details of the norming procedure, the meaning frequency norms, and the source code, standalone binaries, and user manual for the software are available at http:// edom.cnbc.cmu.edu.Keywords Semantic ambiguity . Homonyms . Relative meaning frequency . Norming methods . Rating dictionary definitions . Free associate classification . Homonymy disadvantageThe vast majority of words in English and many other languages are semantically ambiguous-that is, they are associated with multiple distinct interpretations. For example, the word COMPOUND can denote either an or a meaning, depending on the context (hereafter denoted as / COMPOUND; Britton, 1978;Klein & Murphy, 2001). As a result, developing an account of semantic ambiguity resolution is a critical component of any theory of word and discourse comprehension, and this has been a key objective in a considerable body of research over the past several decades (e.g

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“…(1980) Homographs are words with identical spellings and two or more distinct meanings. They make ideal stimuli for research on a variety of problems (cf, Wollen, Cox, Coahran, Shea, & Kirby, 1980). However, in the absence of context, some semantic interpretations are more likely to occur than others.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus 106 pairs of proportions were used in calculating the r with the Cramer (1970) norms. Similarly, 60, 83,186, and 148 pairings were used in calculating the respective rs for the Geis and Winograd (1974), Kausler and Kollasch (1970), Perfetti et al (1971), and Wollen et al (1980) norms.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%