Where Words Get their Meaning

Cognitive processing and distributional modelling of word meaning in first and second language

Editor

Marianna Bolognesi

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027208019 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027260420 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning?
This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts.
By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.

[Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 23] 2020. xi, 208 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.23

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | pp. xi–11

Chapter 1. Word power | pp. 1–10

Part 1. Word meaning construction and representation in the human mind

Chapter 2. Word meaning mental representation | pp. 13–31

Chapter 3. Word meaning extension: Deriving new meanings from old ones | pp. 33–53

Chapter 4. The bilingual mind and the bilingual mental lexicon | pp. 55–74

Part 2. Word meaning construction and representation in the artificial mind

Chapter 5. Distributional models and word embeddings | pp. 77–96

Chapter 6. Evaluating distributional models | pp. 97–115

Chapter 7. Distributional models beyond language | pp. 117–132

Part 3. Converging evidence in language and communication research

Chapter 8. Where words get their meaning | pp. 135–148

Chapter 9. The cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis | pp. 149–167

Chapter 10. Conclusions and outlook | pp. 169–184

References

Index | pp. 207–208

Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Order by:

Rissman, Lilia & Gary Lupyan

2024. Words do not just label concepts: activating superordinate categories through labels, lists, and definitions. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 39:5 ► pp. 657 ff.

Littlemore, Jeannette, Marianna Bolognesi, Nina Julich Warpakowski, Chung-hong Danny Leung & Paula Perez Sobrino

2023. Metaphor, Metonymy, the Body and the Environment,

Tjuka, Annika, Robert Forkel & Johann-Mattis List

2023. Curating and extending data for language comparison in Concepticon and NoRaRe. Open Research Europe 2 ► pp. 141 ff.

Tjuka, Annika, Robert Forkel & Johann-Mattis List

2023. Curating and extending data for language comparison in Concepticon and NoRaRe. Open Research Europe 2 ► pp. 141 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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