کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
931974 923054 2012 19 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Polysemy in sentence comprehension: Effects of meaning dominance
موضوعات مرتبط
علوم زیستی و بیوفناوری علم عصب شناسی علوم اعصاب شناختی
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Polysemy in sentence comprehension: Effects of meaning dominance
چکیده انگلیسی

Words like church are polysemous, having two related senses (a building and an organization). Three experiments investigated how polysemous senses are represented and processed during sentence comprehension. On one view, readers retrieve an underspecified, core meaning, which is later specified more fully with contextual information. On another view, readers retrieve one or more specific senses. In a reading task, context that was neutral or biased towards a particular sense preceded a polysemous word. Disambiguating material consistent with only one sense followed, in a second sentence (Experiment 1) or the same sentence (Experiments 2 and 3). Reading the disambiguating material was faster when it was consistent with that context, and dominant senses were committed to more strongly than subordinate senses. Critically, following neutral context, the continuation was read more quickly when it selected the dominant sense, and the degree of sense dominance partially explained the reading time advantage. Similarity of the senses also affected reading times. Across experiments, we found that sense selection may not be completed immediately following a polysemous word but is completed at a sentence boundary. Overall, the results suggest that readers select an individual sense when reading a polysemous word, rather than a core meaning.


► Three experiments showed sense frequency effects when processing polysemous words.
► More difficulty shifting from dominant context to subordinate sense than the reverse.
► After neutral context, dominant sense read more quickly than subordinate.
► The stronger a dominant sense is, the greater the sense frequency effect found.
► Results support separate senses versus an underspecified or core representation.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Journal of Memory and Language - Volume 67, Issue 4, November 2012, Pages 407–425
نویسندگان
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