Semantic property activation during the interpretation of combined concepts
Thomas L. Spalding | Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Interpreting a novel conceptual combination often involves selecting and using a relation to link the constituent concepts (e.g., interpreting a plastic pot as a pot made of plastic). In two experiments, we presented the head noun along with a property that, while always at least plausibly true of the head noun, may be more or less consistent with a particular relational interpretation of the combined concept. We then asked the participants to verify particular relational interpretations of the target combination. The results indicate that manipulating what is currently active about the head noun in this way affects the acceptability of different relational interpretations of the combined concept.
Keywords: compounds, conceptual combination, noun–noun phrases
Published online: 11 May 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.2.1.03spa
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.2.1.03spa
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2010. Meaning predictability and compound interpretation: A psycholinguistic investigation.
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Gagné, Christina L. & Thomas L. Spalding
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In [Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 59],
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Gagné, Christina L. & Thomas L. Spalding
2014. Subcategorisation, not uncertainty, drives the modification effect.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29:10 ► pp. 1283 ff.
Gagné, Christina L. & Thomas L. Spalding
2015.
In Semantics of Complex Words [Studies in Morphology, 3],
► pp. 9 ff.
Levin, Beth, Lelia Glass & Dan Jurafsky
2019. Systematicity in the semantics of noun compounds: The role of artifacts vs. natural kinds.
Linguistics 57:3 ► pp. 429 ff.
Park, Juana, Faria Sana, Christina L. Gagné & Thomas L. Spalding
2021. Factors that Influence the Processing of Noun-Noun Metaphors.
Metaphor and Symbol 36:1 ► pp. 20 ff.
Spalding, Thomas L. & Christina L. Gagné
2011. Relation priming in established compounds: facilitation?.
Memory & Cognition 39:8 ► pp. 1472 ff.
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