Influence of thematic relations on the comprehension of modifier–noun combinations.

Abstract

To comprehend a nonpredicating combination involving a modifier (e.g., mountain) and a head noun (e.g., stream), one must specify a thematic relation (e.g., a stream in the mountains) that links the 2 constituent concepts. The authors investigated the influence of thematic relations on the comprehension of nonpredicating combinations. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated that people use information about what relations the constituents typically instantiate during conceptual combination. More specifically, a combination is easier to interpret when it uses a frequent relation of the modifier than when it uses a less frequent relation. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that these results are not an artifact of the individual component words. The authors propose a model of conceptual combination called the competition among relations in nominals (CARIN) model in which ease of comprehension depends both on the frequency of the to-be-selected relation and on the frequency of the alternatives.

Relation priming in established compounds: facilitation?

“…The RICE (Relational Interpretation Competitive Evaluation; Spalding et al, 2010) theory of compound interpretation is a development and extension of the CARIN (Competition Among Relations In Nominals; Gagné & Shoben, 1997) theory. According to RICE, the interpretation of a compound is arrived at through a suggestevaluate-elaborate process.…”

“…Finally, once a suggested relation has been selected and evaluated as appropriate, there is an elaboration stage in which the full meaning of the compound is developed. Gagné and Shoben (1997) showed that the ease of interpretation of novel compounds depended on the relative frequency with which the required relation had previously been used with the modifier. Recently, Spalding and Gagné (2008) showed that the main determinate of ease of interpretation across items in the Gagné and Shoben (1997) data was the number of "strong but wrong" relations for the modifier.…”

“…Gagné and Shoben (1997) showed that the ease of interpretation of novel compounds depended on the relative frequency with which the required relation had previously been used with the modifier. Recently, Spalding and Gagné (2008) showed that the main determinate of ease of interpretation across items in the Gagné and Shoben (1997) data was the number of "strong but wrong" relations for the modifier. That is, the greater the number of relations that were more frequent (for the modifier) than the relation required for the target compound, the slower participants were to determine that the target compound made sense (see Gagné, 2008, andSpalding et al, 2010, for discussions of the implications of this finding for understanding the process of novel-compound interpretation).…”

“…Thus, the interpretation of the compound includes the relation as well as the meanings of the constituent words (see Pelletier, 2003, for a related philosophical argument). Linguists interested in how compounds are interpreted have developed several similar classification schemes for the relations that link the constituents of compounds (e.g., Downing, 1977;Levi, 1978;Warren, 1978).A number of studies have shown that such relations influence the processing of novel compounds (Devereux, Maguire, Costello, & Cater 2006;Estes & Jones, 2006;Gagné, 2001Gagné, , 2002Gagné & Shoben, 1997Gagné & Spalding, 2006;Gagné, Spalding, Figueredo, & Mullaly 2009;Gagné, Spalding, & Ji 2005b;Jones, Estes, & Marsh 2008;Maguire & Cater, 2004;Maguire, Devereux, Costello, & Cater 2007;Ramey, 2005;, 2008Spalding, Gagné, Mullaly, & Ji 2010;Storms & Wisniewski, 2005). For example, effects of such relations were demonstrated in a relation-priming paradigm using novel compounds by Gagné (2001).…”

“…For example, Gagné (2001) found no relational effects associated with the head noun, although they found robust relational effects associated with the modifier (see also Gagné & Shoben, 1997;Gagné et al, 2005b;Jones et al, 2008;Maguire & Cater, 2004;Ramey, 2005;Storms & Wisniewski, 2005). Headbased relational effects have been found when the task requires only the evaluation of a given interpretation (Spalding et al, 2010).…”