Are structural features of word meaning reflected in judgments of semantic similarity and difference?

Abstract

Several current linguistic theories suggest that the meaning of words includes a syntactic organization similar or identical to the syntactic/semantic organization of sentences. The author proposes a model of the structure of complex words that includes structural components analogous to Fillmore's (1968) “cases” as well as “core meanings” that allow an organization of the internal lexicon by shared meaning content into fields. Hypotheses concerning the proposed model, which is contrasted to a purely associationistic model of lexical organization, are tested using the traditional psycholinguistic methods of investigation of word-sorting tasks and judgments of similarity and difference in meaning that have been assumed to directly reflect the internal lexicons of language users. The results of the experiments, contrasting the saliency of meaning content and meaning structure for linguistically-naive language users, indicate that meaning content is a more salient basis for judgments of similarity and difference than is meaning structure under certain restricted conditions. A post-hoc interpretation of the findings, based in part on the written comments of the participants in the experiments who were asked to explain the bases for their solutions to the word-sorting tasks and for their judgments of similarity and difference, includes the postulation of interference by processing strategies. Thus, it is concluded that both the organization of the internal lexicon and processing strategies are reflected in judgments of similarity and difference by naive language users.