Linguistic Context and the Priming of Semantic Information

Two experiments were carried out to demonstrate that linguistic context (in the form of a sentence) influences the interpretation of unambiguous words. Experiment I established that subjects read a sentence which primes a particular aspect of the meaning of one of the words it contains faster than they read a sentence which primes no particular aspect of the word's meaning. It also showed that subjects produce semantic characteristics of the word faster following the priming sentence than following the sentence that primes no particular semantic component. Experiment II corroborated these results using a task in which subjects read a sentence and then answered a question about the meaning of a word that occurred in it. Given a particular question, responses were faster when it followed a sentence that primed a characteristic relevant to the question than when it followed a sentence that primed no particular characteristic of the word. Responses were reliably slowest when the question followed a sentence that primed a characteristic that was not relevant to the question. Semantic priming is known to affect the identification of words and their disambiguation; the present study confirms that it also affects the specific interpretation of words.     

学习因素对语义信息加工性质的影响

本研究通过两个行为实验,采用句子核证作业,将SAD技术和范畴学习范式有机地结合起来,对语义信息加工进程以及学习因素在其中的作用进行了考察。实验一研究了熟悉性对语义信息加工的影响。结果表明,高熟悉句的部分信息积累具有离散的趋势;低熟悉句的部分信息积累是连续性的。实验二采用范畴学习。并结合SAD技术的句子核证作业．考察了在学习过程中语义加工性质的变化。结果发现：过度学习比初始学习有更多的部分信息积累,并随信号间隔的延长而逐渐增加;过度学习表现出部分信息积累的离散性变化;初始学习则表现出连续累积的趋势。说明学习确实造成了连续性加工向离散性质的过渡。     

Semantic Information and the Correctness Theory of Truth

Semantic information is usually supposed to satisfy the veridicality thesis: p qualifies as semantic information only if p is true. However, what it means for semantic information to be true is often left implicit, with correspondentist interpretations representing the most popular, default option. The article develops an alternative approach, namely a correctness theory of truth (CTT) for semantic information. This is meant as a contribution not only to the philosophy of information but also to the philosophical debate on the nature of truth. After the introduction, in Sect. 2, semantic information is shown to be translatable into propositional semantic information (i). In Sect. 3, i is polarised into a query (Q) and a result (R), qualified by a specific context, a level of abstraction and a purpose. This polarization is normalised in Sect. 4, where [Q + R] is transformed into a Boolean question and its relative yes/no answer [Q + A]. This completes the reduction of the truth of i to the correctness of A. In Sects. 5 and 6, it is argued that (1) A is the correct answer to Q if and only if (2) A correctly saturates Q by verifying and validating it (in the computer science’s sense of “verification” and “validation”); that (2) is the case if and only if (3) [Q + A] generates an adequate model (m) of the relevant system (s) identified by Q; that (3) is the case if and only if (4) m is a proxy of s (in the computer science’s sense of “proxy”) and (5) proximal access to m commutes with the distal access to s (in the category theory’s sense of “commutation”); and that (5) is the case if and only if (6) reading/writing (accessing, in the computer science’s technical sense of the term) m enables one to read/write (access) s. Sect. 7 provides some further clarifications about CTT, in the light of semantic paradoxes. Section 8 draws a general conclusion about the nature of CTT as a theory for systems designers not just systems users. In the course of the article all technical expressions from computer science are explained.     

空间信息表征对语义相关判断的影响

探讨空间信息对语义相关判断的影响。实验材料是具有内在纵向空间关系的词对,纵向呈现在计算机屏幕上,呈现顺序与指代物的空间位置次序一致或不一致,要求被试对词对进行语义相关判断。综合2个实验的结果表明,语义相关判断任务中被试会自动激活指代物的空间信息,并且其对空间信息的表征是知觉符号表征,而非表象表征。研究结果进一步支持了知觉符号理论。     

语素语义信息对言语听辨的影响

实验主要探讨双字词中语素的语义信息对言语听辨的影响。实验采用语义判断任务,实验材料为双字词首字完整语音分别加上尾字的80毫秒、120毫秒、160毫秒、200毫秒4个语音片段,让被试进行听觉词汇判断任务。实验1选用48组双字词作为关键材料,48组作为填充材料,被试根据听到的语音片段判断该词是否为人词,如,“教师”为人词,“非洲”为非人词;实验2选用了56组关键材料、56组填充材料,任务同实验1。实验结果发现,双字词加工的首字语素语义信息在听词辨认的初始参与了加工,强语义联系对尾字的识别有促进作用,弱语义联系对尾字的识别有抑制作用。初步实验结果支持了言语听辨的多重信息并行激活模型——TRACE模型。     

语义信息在大小数量表征中的作用

本研究采用注意瞬脱实验范式探讨了语义信息在数量表征中的作用。结果发现：（1）在双任务方式中,字母辨认任务对大数（5及以上）的辨认产生干扰,但不影响小数（4及以下）的辨认绩效;（2）数量表征在视野上出现差异性,表现为在小数辨认时,左侧视野呈现绩效高于右侧;大数辨认正好相反,即右侧视野呈现高于左侧。结果表明,语义信息在表征小数和大数中的作用不同：小数的表征无需语言参与;而大数则更多地涉及语义信息,可能需语音回路中无声复述机制的参与。     

On the Irrelevance of Semantic Information for the llIrrelevant Speech Effect

Two experiments that tested whether semantic similarity between visually presented targets and auditorily presented distractors has an effect on serial recall of the visual targets are reported. In Experiment 1, we found no difference in the recall of two-digit numbers when distractors were either numbers or words and non-words that were designed to be phonologically similar to the targets. In Experiment 2 the 'semantic distance' between targets and distractors had no effect on serial recall. Taken together, these experiments conceptually replicate and extend earlier results, and they establish constraints for models of the effect of unattended acoustic information on serial recall.     

语音信息对不同水平中国英语学习者语义加工的影响

研究通过同音异义词对被试判断句子语义正误的干扰实验,来考查语音信息对不同英语水平的中国英语学习者语义加工的影响。实验结果发现,英语水平较高的中国被试所受到的同音异义词的干扰较大,而英语水平普通的被试受到的干扰很小。这一结果说明,英语学习者的水平越高,其语音信息的使用程度越高。     

Semantic Normativity and Semantic Causality

Semantic normativism, which is the view that semantic properties/concepts are some kind of normative properties/concepts, has become increasingly influential in contemporary meta‐semantics. In this paper, I aim to argue that semantic normativism has difficulty accommodating the causal efficacy of semantic properties. In specific, I raise an exclusion problem for semantic normativism, inspired by the exclusion problem in the philosophy of mind. Moreover, I attempt to show that the exclusion problem for semantic normativism is peculiarly troublesome: while we can solve (or dissolve) mental‐physical exclusion by adopting the so‐called ‘autonomy approach’, a similar autonomy solution to semantic exclusion is implausible if semantic properties are understood as normative properties.     

Reconciling Semantic Dispositionalism with Semantic Holism

Dispositionalist theories of mental content have been attacked on the grounds that they are incompatible with semantic holism. In this paper, I resist important worries of this variety, raised by Paul Boghossian. I argue that his objections can be avoided by a conceptual role version of dispositionalism, where the multifarious relationships between mental contents are grounded on the relationships between their corresponding, grounding dispositions.     

Semantic closure

This paper argues for tlie claims that a) a natural language such as English is semanticaly closed b) semantic closure implies inconsistency. A corollary of these is that the semantics of English must be paraconsistent. The first part of the paper formulates a definition of semantic closure which applies to natural languages and shows that this implies inconsistency. The second section argues that English is semeantically closed. The preceding discussion is predicated on the assumption that there are no truth value gaps. The next section of the paper considers whether the possibility of these makes any difference to the substantive conclusions of the previous sections, and argues that it does not. The crux of the preceding arguments is that none of the consistent semantical accounts that have been offered for solving the semantical paradoxes is a semantic ofEnglish. The final section of the paper produces a general argument as to why this must always be the case.     

Semantic Responsibility

Abstract

In this paper I attempt to develop a notion of responsibility (semantic responsibility) that is to the notion of belief what epistemic responsibility is to the notion of justification. ‘Being semantically responsible’ is shown to involve the fulfilment of cognitive duties which allow the agent to engage in the kind of reason-laden discourses which render her beliefs appropriately sensitive to correction. The concept of semantic responsibility suggests that the notion of belief found in contemporary philosophical debates about content implicitly encompasses radically different classes of beliefs. In what follows I make those different types explicit, and sketch some implications for naturalisation projects in semantics and for accounts of the (putative) non-conceptual content of perceptual experiences.     

Semantic Normativity

Philosophical Studies -     

Semantic holism

A bivalent valuation is snt iff sound (standard PC inference rules take truths only into truths) and non-trivial (not all wffs are assigned the same truth value). Such a valuation is normal iff classically correct for each connective. Carnap knew that there were non-normal snt valuations of PC, and that the gap they revealed between syntax and semantics could be jumped as follows. Let VAL _snt be the set of snt valuations, and VAL _nrm be the set of normal ones. The bottom row in the table for the wedge is not semantically determined by VAL _snt, but if one deletes from VAL _snt all those valuations that are not classically correct at the aforementioned row, one jumps straights to VAL _nrm and thus to classical semantics. The conjecture we call semantic holism claims that the same thing happens for any semantic indeterminacy in any row in the table of any connective of PC, i.e., to remove it is to jump straight to classical semantics. We show (i) why semantic holism is plausible and (ii) why it is nevertheless false. And (iii) we pose a series of questions concerning the number of possible steps or jumps between the indeterminate semantics given by VAL _snt and classical semantics given by VAL _nrm.