The influence of global discourse on lexical ambiguity resolution

Abstract

The influence of global discourse on the resolution of lexical ambiguity was examined in a series of naming experiments. Two-sentence passages were constructed to bias either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of a homonym that was embedded in a locally ambiguous sentence. The results provided evidence for the immediate (O-msec interstimulus interval) resolution of lexical ambiguity and were subsequently replicated in Experiment 2, in which an 80-msec stimulus onset asynchrony exposure duration was employed for the homonyms. Strong dominant and subordinate biased discourse contexts activated only the contextually appropriate sense of a homonym. In Experiment 3, each sentence of the discourse was presented in isolation. The pattern of activation obtained in Experiments 1 and 2 was found to be contingent on the integration of the two sentences to construct an overall global discourse representation of the text. The results support a context-sensitive model of lexical ambiguity resolution.Over the past two decades, lexical ambiguity research has sustained a theoretical dichotomy in which the processing of an ambiguous word (e.g., a homonym) is either influenced by context or impervious to it. The bulk of the research on whether context can immediately influence lexical ambiguity resolution has produced mixed results. Early studies supported the principles of modularity (see Fodor, 1983;Forster, 1979), in which the process ofword meaning activation is encapsulated and independent ofhigher level influences ofsyntax and semantics (e.g., Onifer & Swinney, 1981; Seidenberg, Tanenhaus, Leiman, & Bienkowski, 1982;Swinney, 1979). For example, Swinney presented passages aurally, each of which contained an ambiguous word, and found that lexical decision times for both contextually appropriate and inappropriate target words were faster than those for unrelated words. Seidenberg et al. (1982) also employed the crossmodal priming paradigm, but used a naming task as an index ofpriming, and found that naming latencies for target words that were related to the dominant and subordinate meanings of words with noun/verb ambiguities were faster than those for unrelated target words.More recent research has presented a challenge for the modular view of ambiguity resolution. Several studies have supported an interactive activation framework (see Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1987;McClelland, 1987), in which context can immediately influence meaning activation in such a way that only the contextually appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word is activated (e.g

Resisting Contextual Information: You Can't Put a Salient Meaning Down

“…Manipulated items taken from Vu et al 1998) In addition to showing that contextually appropriate meanings can be made available by the central, predictive mechanism, irrespective of and even before lexical processes are invited, we further demonstrate that coded but contextually inappropriate meanings are also made available swiftly; they get activated automatically by the modular mechanism, irrespective of contextual fit (Peleg et al 2001, Ex. 2).…”

“…Recent findings seem to corroborate this model. They show that, in a highly specific context such as (1), only compatible meanings were made available (Vu and Paul 1998;Vu et al 2000; for an extensive review of the literature on the direct/selective access model, see Giora 2003;Gorfein 1989;Simpson 1994;Small et al 1988).…”

“…How does the graded salience hypothesis, then, account for evidence to the contrary suggesting that only contextually compatible meanings are tapped (Vu and Paul 1998;Vu et al 2000)? In Peleg et al (2001Peleg et al ( , 2004, we propose that such findings are not necessarily the outcome of an interactive mechanism, but may have an alternative explanation.…”

Situation-evoking stimuli, domain of reference, and the incremental interpretation of lexical ambiguity

“…In contrast, Simpson and Krueger (1991) have demonstrated that a strongly biased context could lead to the activation of only the contextually appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word. Finally, Kellas and colleagues (e.g., Martin, Vu, Kellas, & Metcalf, 1999;Vu, Kellas, Metcalf, & Herman, 2000;Vu, Kellas, & Paul, 1998) have established that ambiguity resolution depends on a complex interaction among meaning frequency, context type, and strength of the biased context. Critically, it was found that although meaning frequency does play an important role, its effect can be eliminated, depending on context strength.…”

Dominance and context effects on activation of alternative homophone meanings

“…Evidence from lexical decision, naming, and self-paced reading studies has demonstrated that in strongly biasing contexts, reaction times to contextually appropriate items are facilitated but reaction times to contextually inappropriate meanings are not (Kellas, Martin, Yehling, Herman, & Vu, 1995;Martin, Vu, Kellas, & Metcalf, 1999;Simpson, 1981;Vu, Kellas, Metcalf, & Herman, 2000;Vu, Kellas, & Paul, 1998;Vu, Kellas, Petersen, & Metcalf, 2003).…”