Selectional restrictions,types and categories

The expressions of a language distinguish between many different types of objects. These types can affect how the meanings of these expressions combine. This paper provides a formal picture of the process of meaning combination in a richly typed framework.     

Judging a book by its cover and its contents: the representation of polysemous and homophonous meanings in four-year-old children

Unlike homophonous meanings, which are semantically unrelated (e.g., the use of bat to refer to a baseball bat and a flying rodent), polysemous meanings are systematically related to one another (e.g., the use of book, CD, and video to refer to physical objects, as in ‘the leather book’, or to the intellectual content they contain, as in ‘the profound book’). But do perceived relations among polysemous meanings reflect the presence of generative lexical or conceptual structures that permit the meanings of these words to shift? If so, these structures may also support children’s early representations of polysemous meanings. In four studies, we demonstrate (1) that four-year-old children can understand both the concrete and abstract meanings of words like book, (2) that when taught a novel label for one of these meanings, children can readily understand an extension of that label to the other meaning, and (3) that extension does not occur between two homophonous meanings, which share a common phonological form but are otherwise unrelated. We conclude that the polysemous meanings of words like book rely on a common representational base early in development, and suggest that this may be the result of foundational, generative properties of the lexicon or conceptual system.     

Word Senses as Clusters of Meaning Modulations: A Computational Model of Polysemy

Most words in natural languages are polysemous; that is, they have related but different meanings in different contexts. This one-to-many mapping of form to meaning presents a challenge to understanding how word meanings are learned, represented, and processed. Previous work has focused on solutions in which multiple static semantic representations are linked to a single word form, which fails to capture important generalizations about how polysemous words are used; in particular, the graded nature of polysemous senses, and the flexibility and regularity of polysemy use. We provide a novel view of how polysemous words are represented and processed, focusing on how meaning is modulated by context. Our theory is implemented within a recurrent neural network that learns distributional information through exposure to a large and representative corpus of English. Clusters of meaning emerge from how the model processes individual word forms. In keeping with distributional theories of semantics, we suggest word meanings are generalized from contexts of different word tokens, with polysemy emerging as multiple clusters of contextually modulated meanings. We validate our results against a human-annotated corpus of polysemy focusing on the gradedness, flexibility, and regularity of polysemous sense individuation, as well as behavioral findings of offline sense relatedness ratings and online sentence processing. The results provide novel insights into how polysemy emerges from contextual processing of word meaning from both a theoretical and computational point of view.     

Models of causation and the semantics of causal verbs

This research examines the relationship between the concept of CAUSE as it is characterized in psychological models of causation and the meaning of causal verbs, such as the verb cause itself. According to focal set models of causation (; ), the concept of CAUSE should be more similar to the concepts of ENABLE and PREVENT than either is to each other. According to a model based on theory of force dynamics, the force dynamic model, the concepts of CAUSE, ENABLE, and PREVENT should be roughly equally similar to one another. The relationship between these predictions and the meaning of causal verbs was examined by having participants sort causal verbs and rate them with respect to the dimensions specified by the two models. The results from five experiments indicated that the force dynamic model provides a better account of the meaning of causal verbs than do focal set models of causation. Implications for causal inference and induction are discussed.     

Resolving syntactic category ambiguity: An eye-movement analysis

In two experiments, participants' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing biased syntactic category ambiguous words with either distinct (e.g., duck) or related (e.g., burn) meanings or unambiguous control words. In Experiment 1, prior context was consistent with either the dominant or subordinate interpretation of the ambiguous word. The subordinate bias effect was absent for the ambiguous words in gaze duration measures. However, effects of ambiguity did emerge in other measures for the ambiguous words preceded by context supporting the subordinate interpretation. In Experiment 2, context preceding the target words was neutral. Ambiguity effects only arose when posttarget context was consistent with the subordinate interpretation of the ambiguous words, indicating that readers initially selected the dominant interpretation. Results support immediate theories of syntactic category ambiguity resolution, but also suggest that recovery from misanalysis of syntactic category ambiguity is more difficult than for lexical-semantic ambiguity in which alternate interpretations do not cross syntactic category.     

Cognitive Metaphor Theory and the Metaphysics of Immediacy

One of the core tenets of cognitive metaphor theory is the claim that metaphors ground abstract knowledge in concrete, first‐hand experience. In this paper, I argue that this grounding hypothesis contains some problematic conceptual ambiguities and, under many reasonable interpretations, empirical difficulties. I present evidence that there are foundational obstacles to defining a coherent and cognitively valid concept of “metaphor” and “concrete meaning,” and some general problems with singling out certain domains of experience as more immediate than others. I conclude from these considerations that whatever the facts are about the comprehension of individual metaphors, the available evidence is incompatible with the notion of an underlying conceptual structure organized according to the immediacy of experience.     

Semantic distance effects on object and action naming

Graded interference effects were tested in a naming task, in parallel for objects and actions. Participants named either object or action pictures presented in the context of other pictures (blocks) that were either semantically very similar, or somewhat semantically similar or semantically dissimilar. We found that naming latencies for both object and action words were modulated by the semantic similarity between the exemplars in each block, providing evidence in both domains of graded semantic effects.     

Semantic Information and the Syntax of Propositional Attitude Verbs

Propositional attitude verbs, such as think and want, have long held interest for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the granularity with which these verbs’ semantic and pragmatic properties are recoverable from their syntactic distributions, using three behavioral experiments aimed at explicitly quantifying the relationship between these two sets of properties. Experiment 1 gathers a measure of 30 propositional attitude verbs’ syntactic distributions using an acceptability judgment task. Experiments 2a and 2b gather measures of semantic similarity between those same verbs using a generalized semantic discrimination (triad or “odd man out”) task and an ordinal (Likert) scale task, respectively. Two kinds of analyses are conducted on the data from these experiments. The first compares both the acceptability judgments and the semantic similarity judgments to previous classifications derived from the syntax and semantics literature. The second kind compares the acceptability judgments to the semantic similarity judgments directly. Through these comparisons, we show that there is quite fine‐grained information about propositional attitude verbs’ semantics carried in their syntactic distributions—whether one considers the sorts of discrete qualitative classifications that linguists traditionally work with or the sorts of continuous quantitative classifications that can be derived experimentally.     

The Wind Chilled the Spectators, but the Wine Just Chilled: Sense, Structure, and Sentence Comprehension

Anticipation plays a role in language comprehension. In this article, we explore the extent to which verb sense influences expectations about upcoming structure. We focus on change of state verbs like shatter , which have different senses that are expressed in either transitive or intransitive structures, depending on the sense that is used. In two experiments we influence the interpretation of verb sense by manipulating the thematic fit of the grammatical subject as cause or affected entity for the verb, and test whether readers' expectations for a transitive or intransitive structure change as a result. This sense-biasing context influenced reading times in the postverbal regions. Reading times for transitive sentences were faster following good-cause than good-theme subjects, but the opposite pattern was found for intransitive sentences. We conclude that readers use sense-contingent subcategorization preferences during on-line comprehension.     

Action explanation and its presuppositions

In debates about rationalizing action explanation causalists assume that the psychological states that explain an intentional action have both causal and rational features. I scrutinize the presuppositions of those who seek and offer rationalizing action explanations. This scrutiny shows, I argue, that where rational features play an explanatory role in these contexts, causal features play only a presuppositional role. But causal features would have to play an explanatory role if rationalizing action explanation were a species of causal explanation. Consequently, it is not a species of causal explanation.     

Feature Statistics Modulate the Activation of Meaning During Spoken Word Processing

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature‐based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts’ features—the number of concepts they occur in (distinctiveness/sharedness) and likelihood of co‐occurrence (correlational strength)—determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech‐to‐meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory in tasks like lexical decision that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time‐sensitive co‐occurrence‐driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general‐to‐specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation.     

Is the Lateralized Categorical Perception of Color a Situational Effect of Language on Color Perception?

This study investigated whether and how a person's varied series of lexical categories corresponding to different discriminatory characteristics of the same colors affect his or her perception of colors. In three experiments, Chinese participants were primed to categorize four graduated colors—specifically dark green, light green, light blue, and dark blue—into green and blue; light color and dark color; and dark green, light green, light blue, and dark blue. The participants were then required to complete a visual search task. Reaction times in the visual search task indicated that different lateralized categorical perceptions (CPs) of color corresponded to the various priming situations. These results suggest that all of the lexical categories corresponding to different discriminatory characteristics of the same colors can influence people's perceptions of colors and that color perceptions can be influenced differently by distinct types of lexical categories depending on the context.     

Does right hemisphere damaged patients' impaired performance on a sentence insertion task indicate a syntactic or a lexical level deficit?

The present paper focuses on two studies, one on English (Schneiderman & Saddy, 1988) and the other on Italian (De Vreese, Neri Rubichi, & Salvioli, 1996), which report on right hemisphere damaged subjects' inability to correctly insert a word or phrase into an already well-formed sentence under certain stimulus conditions. Despite their strikingly similar findings, the results of the studies are interpreted quite differently. Schneiderman & Saddy consider the deficit to be syntactic, while De Vreese et al. view it as occurring at the lexical category or morphological level. An analysis and regrouping of the stimulus items from both studies indicate that a single syntactic interpretation could account for their results. Suggestions are made for further analyses and research to increase our understanding of the syntactic capacities of the intact right hemisphere.     

Parkinson’s disease disrupts both automatic and controlled processing of action verbs

The problem of how word meaning is processed in the brain has been a topic of intense investigation in cognitive neuroscience. While considerable correlational evidence exists for the involvement of sensory-motor systems in conceptual processing, it is still unclear whether they play a causal role. We investigated this issue by comparing the performance of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) with that of age-matched controls when processing action and abstract verbs. To examine the effects of task demands, we used tasks in which semantic demands were either implicit (lexical decision and priming) or explicit (semantic similarity judgment). In both tasks, PD patients’ performance was selectively impaired for action verbs (relative to controls), indicating that the motor system plays a more central role in the processing of action verbs than in the processing of abstract verbs. These results argue for a causal role of sensory-motor systems in semantic processing.     

Three Pervasive Presuppositions about Human Life and Ethics Strongly Warrant Analysis

Common philosophical discussions concerning the ethics of human interaction with the biosphere and universe have been significantly informed by certain presuppositions: (1) nature is conquerable; (2) human cultural and social (contrasted with moral) progress is somewhat like a thing, beyond human control, and is inevitable and benevolent; and (3) Homo sapiens is the superior life‐form. Although arguments, such as whether humans should conquer nature, founded upon these presuppositions have sometimes been challenged, each of these three presuppositions wants direct analysis. The three have become so ingrained in professional and everyday discourse that they have mythic proportions, as though beyond question. Because of the weightiness of the relevant philosophical issues, they merit overt analysis. Although they are independent and may be analyzed separately, this article treats them as whole, as they often work together in arguments. After finding substantial problems, the article suggests alternative ways of building sustainable presuppositions in similar territory.     

Are Automatic Conceptual Cores the Gold Standard of Semantic Processing? The Context‐Dependence of Spatial Meaning in Grounded Congruency Effects

According to grounded cognition, words whose semantics contain sensory‐motor features activate sensory‐motor simulations, which, in turn, interact with spatial responses to produce grounded congruency effects (e.g., processing the spatial feature of up for sky should be faster for up vs. down responses). Growing evidence shows these congruency effects do not always occur, suggesting instead that the grounded features in a word's meaning do not become active automatically across contexts. Researchers sometimes use this as evidence that concepts are not grounded, further concluding that grounded information is peripheral to the amodal cores of concepts. We first review broad evidence that words do not have conceptual cores, and that even the most salient features in a word's meaning are not activated automatically. Then, in three experiments, we provide further evidence that grounded congruency effects rely dynamically on context, with the central grounded features in a concept becoming active only when the current context makes them salient. Even when grounded features are central to a word's meaning, their activation depends on task conditions.     

Ontologies and Worlds in Category Theory: Implications for Neural Systems

We propose category theory, the mathematical theory of structure, as a vehicle for defining ontologies in an unambiguous language with analytical and constructive features. Specifically, we apply categorical logic and model theory, based upon viewing an ontology as a sub-category of a category of theories expressed in a formal logic. In addition to providing mathematical rigor, this approach has several advantages. It allows the incremental analysis of ontologies by basing them in an interconnected hierarchy of theories, with an operation on the hierarchy that expresses the formation of complex theories from simple theories that express first principles. Another operation forms abstractions expressing the shared concepts in an array of theories. The use of categorical model theory makes possible the incremental analysis of possible worlds, or instances, for the theories, and the mapping of instances of a theory to instances of its more abstract parts. We describe the theoretical approach by applying it to the semantics of neural networks.     

Lexical configuration and lexical engagement: when adults learn new words

People know thousands of words in their native language, and each of these words must be learned at some time in the person's lifetime. A large number of these words will be learned when the person is an adult, reflecting the fact that the mental lexicon is continuously changing. We explore how new words get added to the mental lexicon, and provide empirical support for a theoretical distinction between what we call lexical configuration and lexical engagement. Lexical configuration is the set of factual knowledge associated with a word (e.g., the word's sound, spelling, meaning, or syntactic role). Almost all previous research on word learning has focused on this aspect. However, it is also critical to understand the process by which a word becomes capable of lexical engagement--the ways in which a lexical entry dynamically interacts with other lexical entries, and with sublexical representations. For example, lexical entries compete with each other during word recognition (inhibition within the lexical level), and they also support the activation of their constituents (top-down lexical-phonemic facilitation, and lexically-based perceptual learning). We systematically vary the learning conditions for new words, and use separate measures of lexical configuration and engagement. Several surprising dissociations in behavior demonstrate the importance of the theoretical distinction between configuration and engagement.