Where Words Get their Meaning

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

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ISBN 9789027208019 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00
 
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ISBN 9789027260420 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00
 
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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.
Publishing status:
Table of Contents
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

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. DOI logo
Littlemore, Jeannette, Marianna Bolognesi, Nina Julich Warpakowski, Chung-hong Danny Leung & Paula Perez Sobrino
2023. Metaphor, Metonymy, the Body and the Environment, DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo

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.

Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFDM: Bilingualism & multilingualism

Main BISAC Subject

LAN016000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2020040110 | Marc record