Exhaustive semantic activation for reading ambiguous verbs in Chinese sentences

Chien-Jer Charles Lin,Yi-Rung Chen

doi:10.1186/s40655-015-0008-2

Chien-Jer Charles Lin, Yi-Rung Chen

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40655-015-0008-2

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Abstract

Studies of lexical ambiguity resolution in sentential contexts have not sufficiently considered the relatedness among an ambiguous word’s meanings as a predicting factor for semantic activation. To better understand the relation between lexical access and discourse processing and the effect of semantic relatedness on lexical ambiguity resolution, a cross-modal lexical priming experiment focusing on Mandarin ambiguous verbs of varying degrees of semantic relatedness was conducted. The results indicated that both meanings of an ambiguous verb were activated regardless of contextual biases and the degrees of semantic relatedness between the associated meanings. Taken together with previous research, the present study suggests that the meanings of an ambiguous word (i.e., homophonic homographs, which share both phonological and orthographic representations) are co-activated exhaustively if they are syntactically licensed by the context. These results thus support the exhaustive semantic activation model of lexical ambiguity resolution and the syntax-first theory of sentence processing.

Highlights

1 Background: lexical ambiguity resolution and modularity The human lexicon is known for having multiple mappings between forms and functions
The same lexical form is often associated with multiple meanings, and different lexical forms may overlap in their semantic denotations
3 Lexical ambiguity resolution in Chinese sentences Most research on lexical ambiguity resolution in reading Chinese sentences has adopted the cross-modal lexical decision paradigm, which we focus on

Summary

Introduction

1 Background: lexical ambiguity resolution and modularity The human lexicon is known for having multiple mappings between forms and functions. This article focuses on the processing of the former type of lexical-semantic mapping in Chinese sentences, namely the resolution of lexical ambiguity during Chinese sentence comprehension. Research on the processing of lexical ambiguity has produced robust evidence that ambiguous words are processed differently from unambiguous ones. The meanings associated with date as shown in 1a, referring to ‘a day’, and 1b, referring to ‘a fruit’, for example, are relatively independent of each other while the meanings associated with film as shown in 2a, referring to ‘the physical material used to produce motion pictures’, and 2b, referring to ‘a movie’, are more closely related.

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