Taking on semantic commitments: Processing multiple meanings vs. multiple senses

Frazier, Lyn; Rayner, Keith

doi:10.1016/0749-596x(90)90071-7

Cited by 229 publications

(262 citation statements)

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“…Sustained activation of both meanings of polysemous words supports an account of representation in which the multiple senses are stored together. The current results do not directly address the nature of polysemous representations, but they are compatible with the possibility that polysemes exist as a basic or common, core representation, which could be seen as underspecified (Frazier & Rayner, 1990;Frisson & Pickering, 1999). The core representation comprises semantic information common across the different senses of the polysemous word (e.g., "rabbit" might include +animate, +farm animal, +edible, +meat]), which can be expanded online for complete comprehension when the context is available (or perhaps even when it is not).…”

Section: Representational Differences Between Homonymous and Polysemosupporting

confidence: 54%

“…Across a number of studies it has been shown that processing words with distinct meanings delays word recognition (homonymy disadvantage) as measured by lexical decision times (Beretta et al, 2005;Rodd et al, 2002), eye fixation times (Frazier & Rayner, 1990) and the latency of the M350 brain response (Pylkkänen et al, 2006). These studies mostly interpret their results in terms of competition between the alternative meanings of homonyms 2 .…”

Section: Representational Differences Between Homonymous and Polysemomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies that directly compared the processing of homonyms and polysemes concluded that representational differences do exist between the two types. For example, during reading, polysemes were associated with shorter fixation times than homonymous words (Frazier & Rayner, 1990). This finding was used to argue that different senses of polysemous words are complementary, not incompatible, and thus selection of a specific sense is not required immediately for processing to continue.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: Evidence from EEG

2015

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Theoretical linguistic accounts of lexical ambiguity distinguish between homonymy, where words that share a lexical form have unrelated meanings, and polysemy, where the meanings are related. The present study explored the psychological reality of this theoretical assumption by asking whether there is evidence that homonyms and polysemes are represented and processed differently in the brain. We investigated the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words using EEG. Homonyms and polysemes were each further subdivided into two: unbalanced homonyms (e.g., "coach") and balanced homonyms (e.g., "match"); metaphorical polysemes (e.g., "mouth") and metonymic polysemes (e.g., "rabbit"). These four types of ambiguous words were presented as primes in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task employing a long ISI (750 ms).Targets were related to one of the meanings of the primes, or were unrelated. ERPs formed relative to the target onset indicated that the theoretical distinction between homonymy and polysemy was reflected in the N400 brain response. For targets following homonymous primes (both unbalanced and balanced), no effects survived at this long ISI indicating that both meanings of the prime had already decayed. On the other hand, for polysemous primes (both metaphorical and metonymic), activation was observed for both dominant and subordinate senses. The observed processing differences between homonymy and polysemy provide evidence in support of differential neuro-cognitive representations for the two types of ambiguity. We argue that the polysemous senses act collaboratively to strengthen the representation, facilitating maintenance, while the competitive nature of homonymous meanings leads to decay.

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Section: Representational Differences Between Homonymous and Polysemosupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Representational Differences Between Homonymous and Polysemomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: Evidence from EEG

2015

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“…However, as the meaning frequencies become unbalanced and one meaning becomes clearly dominant, it becomes possible, in principle, to predict which meaning to activate with a high degree of accuracy (e.g., the <lease> meaning of RENT occurs more frequently than the <opening> meaning). As a result, differences in dominance may critically modulate the processing of an ambiguous word by altering the representations that are activated and maintained in neutral contexts (Frazier & Rayner, 1990;Seidenberg, Tanenhaus, Leiman, & Bienkowski, 1982;Swinney, 1979;Williams, 1992). When interpretation frequencies are balanced, both interpretations may be partially activated to the same extent.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The difference between balanced and unbalanced ambiguous words is most pronounced in the case of homonyms-words for which a single written and spoken form is associated with multiple unrelated interpretations, and for which there is general agreement that the semantic overlap between the interpretations is minimal (e.g., <dog>/<tree> BARK; Armstrong & Plaut, 2008;Frazier & Rayner, 1990;Hino, Kusunose, & Lupker, 2010;Hino et al, 2006;Klein & Murphy, 2001Klepousniotou et al, 2008;Rodd et al, 2002;Rodd, Gaskell, & Marslen-Wilson, 2004;Rubenstein et al, 1970). This contrasts with polysemes, for which a single written and spoken form is associated with multiple related interpretations, which may reduce the degree to which each individual meaning may be differentially activated (Armstrong & Plaut, 2008Beretta, Fiorentino, & Poeppel, 2005;Frazier & Rayner, 1990;Klepousniotou et al, 2008;Pylkkänen, Llinás, & Murphy, 2006;Rodd et al, 2002; but see Hino et al, 2010;Hino et al, 2006;Klein & Murphy, 2001.…”

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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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Language Processing

Rayner¹,

Clifton²

2002

Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology

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In this chapter, a number of issues related to language comprehension are reviewed. The chapter consists of four main section: (1) tasks and paradigms used to study language comprehension, (2) comprehension of words, (3) comprehension of sentences, and (4) comprehension of text. For the sections on comprehending words, sentences, and text, we discuss (1) the nature of the task, (2) the core phenomena, and (3) representations and models of the specific process. Research on both reading and listening are discussed, and a number of influential models related to difference aspects of the comprehension process are discussed. While there are fully implemented models of word recognition, sentence parsing, and text comprehension, what is missing are general models of language comprehension that account for the interaction of word, sentence, and discourse comprehension. Developing such a model will not be an easy task, but the empirical facts about reading and listening reviewed in this chapter will hopefully make it possible that such an all‐encompassing model of language comprehension will be developed soon.

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Taking on semantic commitments: Processing multiple meanings vs. multiple senses

Cited by 229 publications

References 10 publications

Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: Evidence from EEG

Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: Evidence from EEG

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

Language Processing

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