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Internal representations guide our navigation of the world, while language allows us to share some of what is encoded internally with others. I have been interested in the content of thought, the nature of word meanings and what they reveal about thought, and how thoughts are expressed in words. My work has combined evidence from laboratory experimentation with observation of word use in natural settings, including from people who speak different languages. Some of the ideas guiding the work are these: understanding entities in the world non‐linguistically engages different representations and processes than talking about them; patterns of word use in a language reflect cultural and linguistic history, not only conceptual representations of current speakers; linguistic and non‐linguistic knowledge is therefore at least partially independent, and so language and thought will not always closely parallel one another; the beliefs people express about their concepts and word meanings may not accurately reflect the implicit knowledge they draw on in interacting with and talking about the world; and only by carefully observing actual word use can we understand how word meanings come about and how linguistic knowledge is used to select words for communication. I have been interested in thought, word meanings, and how thoughts are expressed in words. My work has used laboratory experiments and observations in natural settings and includes evidence from children and people who speak different languages. This paper provides an overview of my program of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of the world is fundamental to human thought and ability to navigate the world, and a large literature has accumulated on the neuroscience of semantic memory. Because language serves as one of the most important interfaces between the private world of thought and other people, researchers often tap into semantic memory through word-based tasks. But this approach fails to acknowledge crucial distinctions between word meaning and general-purpose, non-linguistic knowledge. This article will discuss the relation between words and non-linguistic representations, drawing in part on evidence about cross-linguistic lexical diversity. It will argue that a more nuanced consideration of the language-thought interface is needed in the neuroscience of concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: This study contributes to understanding L2 word learning and why "semantic accent" persists. It examines the impact of L1–L2 semantic relations, input conditions, and L1–L2 dissimilarity on learning outcomes. Methodology: Mandarin-speaking learners of English labeled actions in 26 brief videos, typically called carrying or holding by native speakers. The labeling pattern is simpler in English than in Mandarin but requires a shift to different semantic dimensions. Further, hold is a higher frequency term than carry. The learners were resident in either China (N = 34) or the United States (N = 25), with somewhat higher proficiency in the US sample. Twenty native English speakers in the United States also responded. Data and analysis: Learner groups' name choices were compared to each other and those of native speakers. Findings/conclusions: The dissimilarity between Mandarin and English did not block importing L1 meanings to L2, but progress was seen across sub-groups. Input variables did impact progress: immersion (mediated by proficiency) was better than classroom learning, and use of the higher frequency term was greater than of the lower. Notably, however, many learners narrowed to domain-relevant vocabulary without using the words in native-like ways despite the simplicity of the target L2 system. They appeared to update knowledge at the level of word form-to-domain mappings without updating word form-to-meaning associations. Originality: Semantic accent has been documented previously, but the L2 word learning trajectory and factors that contribute to semantic accent have not been well understood. This study advances that understanding. Significance/implications: Imported meanings are difficult to reshape even for dissimilar languages and even with immersion. Enhanced learning may require sensitizing learners to L2 semantic content via either explicit instruction or intensive exposure to discrepancies between L1 and L2 meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way that languages are able to communicate a potentially infinite set of ideas through a finite lexicon is by compressing emerging meanings into words, such that over time, individual words come to express multiple, related senses of meaning. We propose that overarching communicative and cognitive pressures have created systematic directionality in how new metaphorical senses have developed from existing word senses over the history of English. Given a large set of pairs of semantic domains, we used computational models to test which domains have been more commonly the starting points (source domains) and which the ending points (target domains) of metaphorical mappings over the past millennium. We found that a compact set of variables, including externality , embodiment , and valence , explain directionality in the majority of about 5000 metaphorical mappings recorded over the past 1100 years. These results provide the first large-scale historical evidence that metaphorical mapping is systematic, and driven by measurable communicative and cognitive principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Name choices in four languages were examined for 36 instances of human locomotion. [•] Naming patterns reflected salient physical similarities among the instances. [•] Physical similarities mattered even in naming less common gaits. [•] The languages differed most notably in how many named distinctions they made. [•] There are recurring principles of lexical constraint and variation across domains. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

What drives humans around the world to converge in certain ways in their naming while diverging dramatically in others? We studied how naming patterns are constrained by investigating whether labeling of human locomotion reflects the biomechanical discontinuity between walking and running gaits. Similarity judgments of a student locomoting on a treadmill at different slopes and speeds revealed perception of this discontinuity. Naming judgments of the same clips by speakers of English, Japanese, Spanish, and Dutch showed lexical distinctions between walking and running consistent with the perceived discontinuity. Typicality judgments showed that major gait terms of the four languages share goodness-of-example gradients. These data demonstrate that naming reflects the biomechanical discontinuity between walking and running and that shared elements of naming can arise from correlations among stimulus properties that are dynamic and fleeting. The results support the proposal that converging naming patterns reflect structure in the world, not only acts of construction by observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human language relies on a finite lexicon to express a potentially infinite set of ideas. A key result of this tension is that words acquire novel senses over time. However, the cognitive processes that underlie the historical emergence of new word senses are poorly understood. Here, we present a computational framework that formalizes competing views of how new senses of a word might emerge by attaching to existing senses of the word. We test the ability of the models to predict the temporal order in which the senses of individual words have emerged, using an historical lexicon of English spanning the past millennium. Our findings suggest that word senses emerge in predictable ways, following an historical path that reflects cognitive efficiency, predominantly through a process of nearest-neighbor chaining. Our work contributes a formal account of the generative processes that underlie lexical evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable stability of the meanings associated with concrete nouns is arguably important for their effective use. On the other hand, variability is observed across time, individuals, and communicative contexts. This study examined the balance between stability and flexibility in meanings of common, basic level artifact nouns by evaluating speaker differences in their use as a function of age, education, and gender. Diverse samples of monolingual Dutch- (N ≈ 400) and French-speaking (N ≈ 300) Belgian adults made lexical category judgments for pictures of storage containers. Mixture IRT-analyses revealed the presence of latent groups of categorizers related to age but not gender or education in each language. In both languages, older adults relied more on traditional materials such as glass or cardboard in their judgments, whereas younger adults emphasized relatively new materials such as plastics. This generational difference demonstrates how elements of word meaning can shift over the short-term, linking individual to larger scale variation and providing the foundation for meaning evolution over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic categories in the world's languages often reflect a historical process of chaining: A name for one referent is extended to a conceptually related referent, and from there on to other referents, producing a chain of exemplars that all bear the same name. The beginning and end points of such a chain might in principle be rather dissimilar. There is also evidence supporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to support efficient, informative communication, often through semantic categories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explore this tension through computational analyses of existing cross-language naming and sorting data from the domain of household containers. We find (a) formal evidence for historical semantic chaining, and (b) evidence that systems of categories in this domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient communication. Our results demonstrate that semantic chaining is compatible with efficient communication, and they suggest that chaining may be constrained by the functional need for efficient communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In natural language, multiple meanings often share a single word form, a phenomenon known as colexification. Some sets of meanings are more frequently colexified across languages than others, but the source of this variation is not well understood. We propose that cross-linguistic variation in colexification frequency is non-arbitrary and reflects a general principle of cognitive economy: More commonly colexified meanings across languages are those that require less cognitive effort to relate. To evaluate our proposal, we examine patterns of colexification of varying frequency from about 250 languages. We predict these colexification data based on independent measures of conceptual relatedness drawn from large-scale psychological and linguistic resources. Our results show that meanings that are more frequently colexified across these languages tend to be more strongly associated by speakers of English, suggesting that conceptual associativity provides an important constraint on the development of the lexicon. Our work extends research on polysemy and the evolution of word meanings by grounding cross-linguistic regularities in colexification in basic principles of human cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]