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The Truth About Chickens and Bats Ambiguity Avoidance Distinguishes Types of Polysemy
- Source :
- Rabagliati, H & Snedeker, J 2013, ' The Truth About Chickens and Bats Ambiguity Avoidance Distinguishes Types of Polysemy ', Psychological Science, vol. 24, no. 7, pp. 1354-1360 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612472205
- Publication Year :
- 2013
-
Abstract
- Words mean different things in different contexts, a phenomenon called polysemy. People talk about lines of both people and poetry, and about both long distances and long times. Polysemy lets a limited vocabulary capture a great variety of experiences, while highlighting commonalities. But how is this achieved? Are polysemous senses contextually driven modifications of core meanings, or must each sense be memorized separately? We show that participants’ ability to avoid referentially ambiguous descriptions of pictures named by polysemous words provides evidence for both possibilities. When senses followed a regular pattern (e.g., animals and the foodstuffs derived from them; noisy chicken, tasty chicken), participants avoided using ambiguous labels in referentially ambiguous situations (e.g., both types of chicken were present), a result indicating that they noticed a common meaning. But when senses were idiosyncratically related (e.g., sheet of glass, drinking glass), participants frequently produced ambiguous labels, a result indicating that the meanings were separately stored. We discuss implications for the relationship between word meanings and concepts.
- Subjects :
- Vocabulary
media_common.quotation_subject
Meaning (non-linguistic)
Psycholinguistics
Memory
Phenomenon
Humans
Semantic memory
Polysemy
General Psychology
psycholinguistics
media_common
Communication
language
business.industry
semantic memory
linguistics
meaning
Ambiguity
Variety (linguistics)
Linguistics
Semantics
Psychology
business
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Rabagliati, H & Snedeker, J 2013, ' The Truth About Chickens and Bats Ambiguity Avoidance Distinguishes Types of Polysemy ', Psychological Science, vol. 24, no. 7, pp. 1354-1360 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612472205
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7e68e8208edd1b0fe084a5a763deff58