What words mean and express: semantics and pragmatics of kind terms and verbs

Vicente, Agustí­n

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2017.07.007

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(61 reference statements)

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“…Further research is required to more systematically relate Löhr’s (2021) model to psycholinguistic concerns. The present findings do not directly support Vicente’s (2017) claim that the INSTITUTION sense is necessary for the persistence of these nominal types, nor do they support ( Arapini’s, 2013 , 2015 ) belief that the multiple senses of institutional entities are “clustered in a symmetric structure” (2013, p. 35), since there is variability in spite of the very strong trend in INSTITUTION -dominance. While there may in fact be no such thing as a core, essential sense for any of the nominals discussed (with each nominal being a cluster of senses with pragmatic factors determining which one is brought to the fore), the results suggest that there is considerable variation in the level of INSTITUTION -dominance the sense-cluster of each nominal exhibits.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Persistence Conditions of Institutional Entities: Investigating Copredication Through a Forced-Choice Experiment

Murphy

2021

Front. Psychol.

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The conditions under which certain complex polysemous nominals can sustain coherent sense relations (informally, can “survive”) is investigated through a two-alternative forced choice experiment. Written scenarios were constructed which permitted copredication, through which multiple, semantically different sense types are associated with a single nominal. Participants were presented with two scenarios involving a polysemous nominal (e.g., bank, city) and had to select which scenario (and, hence, which combination of predicates) appeared to be the most prototypical, faithful realization of the nominal. In order to achieve this, an additional manipulation was added, such that the number of senses hosted by each forced choice was either equal (2 senses choice vs. 2 senses choice) or unequal (1 sense choice vs. 2/3 senses choice). In order to address certain concerns in the literature about prototypicality, a core question addressed was whether the institutional sense of the nominals strongly determined the option chosen by participants, or whether the number of senses more strongly predicted this. It was found that the best predictor of sense “survival” was not sense frequency, but rather sense complexity or approximation to the institutional sense.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Persistence Conditions of Institutional Entities: Investigating Copredication Through a Forced-Choice Experiment

Murphy

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…On polysemy in general, seeFalkum & Vicente (2015);Vicente & Falkum (2017). The tripartite distinction is relevant to the issue of how rich/thin word meanings plausibly are: seeVicente (2017;2018). Here we will suggest that inherent polysemy requires rich conceptual meanings.2 Though we think that for a polysemy to be considered regular, the pattern has to extend to more than one other term.3 We will keep using the label "inherent polysemy" to refer to cases that pass co-predication and anaphoric binding tests in a regular and stable way.…”

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confidence: 99%

Polysemy and co-predication

Ortega-Andrés

Vicente

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word school, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation.

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“…Lacking sense order manipulations, this experiment has shown that purely semantic and pragmatic factors enter into judgements. The findings do not square with Vicente's (2017) claim that the INSTITUTION sense is necessary for the persistence of these nominal types, nor do they square with Arapinis's (2013Arapinis's ( , 2015 belief that the multiple senses of institutional entities are "clustered in a symmetric structure" (2013: 35), since there is clearly variability in spite of the very strong trend in INSTITUTION-dominance. While there may be no such thing as a core, essential sense for any of the nominals discussed (with each nominal being a cluster of senses with pragmatic factors determining which one is brought to the fore), the results suggest that there is considerable variation in the level of INSTITUTION-dominance the sense-cluster of each nominal exhibits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Persistence conditions of institutional entities: Investigating copredication and prototypicality through a forced-choice experiment

Murphy¹

2021

Preprint

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The conditions under which certain complex polysemous nominals can sustain coherent sense relations (informally, can “survive”) is investigated through a forced-choice experiment. The materials permitted copredication, through which multiple, semantically different sense types are associated with a single nominal. Participants were presented with two scenarios involving a certain polysemous nominal (e.g. bank, city) and had to select which scenario (and, hence, which combination of predicates) appeared to be the most prototypical, faithful realisation of the nominal. In order to achieve this, an additional manipulation was added, such that the number of senses hosted by each choice was either equal (2 senses choice vs. 2 senses choice) or unequal (1 sense choice vs. 2/3 senses choice). In order to address certain concerns in the literature about prototypicality, a core question was whether the institutional sense of the nominals strongly determined the option chosen by participants, or whether the number of senses more strongly predicted this. It was found that the best predictor of the results was not sense frequency, but rather sense complexity or approximation to the institutional sense.

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What words mean and express: semantics and pragmatics of kind terms and verbs

Cited by 10 publications

References 43 publications

Persistence Conditions of Institutional Entities: Investigating Copredication Through a Forced-Choice Experiment

Persistence Conditions of Institutional Entities: Investigating Copredication Through a Forced-Choice Experiment

Polysemy and co-predication

Persistence conditions of institutional entities: Investigating copredication and prototypicality through a forced-choice experiment

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