On the Meaning of Words and Dinosaur Bones: Lexical Knowledge Without a Lexicon

Abstract

Although for many years a sharp distinction has been made in language research between rules and words-with primary interest on rules-this distinction is now blurred in many theories. If anything, the focus of attention has shifted in recent years in favor of words. Results from many different areas of language research suggest that the lexicon is representationally rich, that it is the source of much productive behavior, and that lexically specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation of grammatical structure. But how much information can or should be placed in the lexicon? This is the question I address here. I review a set of studies whose results indicate that event knowledge plays a significant role in early stages of sentence processing and structural analysis. This poses a conundrum for traditional views of the lexicon. Either the lexicon must be expanded to include factors that do not plausibly seem to belong there; or else virtually all information about word meaning is removed, leaving the lexicon impoverished. I suggest a third alternative, which provides a way to account for lexical knowledge without a mental lexicon.

From words-as-mappings to words-as-cues: the role of language in semantic knowledge

“…We criticize the words-asmapping view as untenable, and argue for an alternative wherein our semantic knowledge is structured by both direct perceptual and action experiences as well as linguistic experiences. On this view, words, like other perceptual inputs, are cues to meaning and help to construct our conceptual repertoire (Elman, 2004(Elman, , 2009Lupyan, 2016;Lupyan & Thompson-Schill, 2012). This view places language alongside perception and action in its ability to structure semantic knowledge.…”

“…The alternative to thinking about words deriving meanings by mapping onto a separate conceptual landscape, is to think of words as helping to construct meaning, a framework we will gloss as words-as-cues (e.g., Rumelhart, 1979;Elman, 2004Elman, , 2009Lupyan, 2016;Lupyan & Bergen, 2015). On this view, the meaning of a word is "revealed by the effects it has on [mental] states" (Elman, 2004, p. 301).…”

“…Rather than simply mapping onto pre-existing conceptual representations, words help construct these representations. Rather than mapping onto meaning, words are cues to meaning (Rumelhart, 1979;Elman, 2004Elman, , 2009. On this perspective, our semantic knowledge reflects both perceptual and linguistic experiences, but, as we describe in more detail below, the two experiences differ in some key ways.…”

A aprendizagem da leitura e suas implicações sobre a memória e a cognição

“…As imagens da atividade cerebral em cada uma das situações experimentais foram combinadas, resultando em "ilmes do cérebro", que ilustram o caminho de cada estí-mulo (auditivo ou visual), até as regiões supramodais de processamento linguístico (MARINKOVIC et al, 2003, ilmes disponíveis na versão online do artigo). Assim, ainda que ambas as modalidades convirjam para áreas associativas de processamento semântico-sintático (ELMAN, 2009;GABRIEL, 2015), a linguagem oral e a linguagem escrita percorrem inicialmente caminhos sensoriais distintos, envolvendo estruturas cerebrais próprias e processamento e armazenamento especíicos.…”

Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition: from Algorithm to Curriculum

“…And Elman (2007) says, "Following … Rumelhart …, I will propose that rather than thinking of words as static representations that are subject to mental processing-operands, in other words-they might be better understood as operators, entities that operate directly on mental states in what can be formally understood as a dynamical system." " [W]ords should be thought of not as having intrinsic meaning, but as providing cues to meaning" (Elman 2009). 4…”