Effects Of Polysemy Research Articles

How well are primary and secondary meanings of L2 words acquired?

Abstract Most words in a language have more than one meaning. Yet, few studies have explicitly examined the acquisition of secondary meanings of L2 words and the extent to which polysemy and homonymy affect vocabulary learning. This study explores the effect of polysemy and homonymy on the deliberate acquisition of the form–meaning connections of L2 words. Thirty-six EFL learners (compared with a control group of 30) learned secondary polysemous and homonymous meanings of familiar words and primary meanings of unfamiliar words using flashcards. Knowledge of target words was measured using meaning–recall and meaning–recognition tests immediately after the treatment and again one week later. The findings indicated that learning another meaning for a familiar word was just as difficult as learning the primary meaning of an unfamiliar word, suggesting that the type of meaning (primary, secondary polysemous, or secondary homonymous) might not be an influencing factor in the deliberate acquisition of L2 words.

Roles And Effects of Polysemy in Enriching Kurdish Language Dictionary

As a phenomenon Polysemy exists among all the languages with a difference meanings, forms, and structure. It refers to a word or a morpheme with multiple meanings; those multiple meanings will appear according to the context and the word become clear. From this point of view, this study deals with roles and effects of polysemy in enriching Kurdish language dictionary. This will be conducted in light of (analytical description) methodology. The principles and different aspects of the phenomenon in relation to dictionary and Kurdish language will be discussed. To reach the answer of whether this phenomenon (polysemy) has enriched Kurdish language dictionaries or not? And how? The research consists of two chapters; the first chapter is about the concept, idea of polysemy, its forms, and the reasons of having it. The second chapter focuses on the roles and effects of polysemy behind polysemy formation in enriching Kurdish language dictionaries, and this role is selected according to parts of speech; namely, noun, adjective, and infinitive. In conclusion the results show that polysemy has an important role in enriching Kurdish language dictionaries, and this is due to the multiple meanings of words based on different contexts.

ANALYSIS THE EFFECT OF POLYSEMY ON THE SPEECH LEARNING FROM COVID-19 BY NADIEM MAKARIM TO ELEMENTARY STUDENT

This study entitled “Analysis the Effect of Polysemy on the Speech Learning from Covid-19 by Nadiem Makarim to Elementary School Student”. The objectives of this study were (1) to identify the types of polysemy, (2) to investigate polysemy elements used in the speech, and (3) to identify the effect of polysemy were used on the speech to elementary students. The descriptive qualitative is applied in this study. The data were obtained from the speech by Nadiem makarim using documentation method. Afterward, analysis of this study use data reduction, data display, conclusion drawing and verification. The findings of the research show that there are 65 data of polysemy’s words which find in Learning from Covid-19 speech. Based on the types of polysemy, most of Irregular Polysemy were 38 words (58.5%) and followed by Regular Polysemy with 27 words (41.5%). The effect of polysemy on the speech to the elementary student has not been widely applied to elementary school students. Inasmuch as, the student has limited complex reasoning to a word that has another meaning and is critical. In a sentence, polysemy plays an important role and has the function to distinguish the meaning of a word meaning.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL CONTEXT ON LEXICAL AMBIGUITY EFFECTS

Previous research with the visual lexical decision task demonstrated that polysemous words (multiple related senses) have a processing advantage when compared to unambiguous words, whereas homonymous words (multiple unrelated meanings) have a processing disadvantage. Although the same pattern of results was observed in Serbian, the two effects were investigated in separate studies. The aim of this study was to test whether the effects can be replicated when both types of ambiguity are presented within the same experimental list. To test this, we conducted three experiments. In the first one, the mixed presentation of unambiguous, homonymous, and polysemous words did not reveal any of the ambiguity effects, leading to the conclusion that the experimental context may affect the emergence of ambiguity effects. The other two experiments were conducted to explicitly control for the experimental context. In both experiments, we presented each ambiguity type within the same block and counterbalanced the order of the block presentation. These experiments revealed the presence of the polysemy advantage, but not the homonymy disadvantage, which is a common pattern in literature. Polysemy effects typically emerge relatively easily, whereas the homonymy disadvantage requires additional conditions. Finally, we conclude that experimental context does play a role in ambiguity processing, although the order of presentation does not affect the overall results.

We probably sense sense probabilities

ABSTRACT In this paper, we demonstrate the effects of Information Theory measures on the processing of polysemous nouns and reveal that the sensitivity to multiple related senses can be learned from the linguistic context. We collected large-scale data and applied a correlation design to show that an increase in sense uncertainty (or sense diversity) is followed by a faster visual lexical decision. The facilitatory effect of sense uncertainty was revealed by the predictive power of entropy, followed by the additional analysis, which revealed that both the number of senses and the balance of sense probabilities affected processing. For the first time, the balance of sense probabilities was described via redundancy to demonstrate the effect of the numerical description of the balance of sense probabilities. Finally, we crossed distribution semantics and discrimination learning to show that polysemy effects can arise as a consequence of the principles of error-driven learning.

Constituent polysemy and interpretational diversity in attested English novel compounds

Abstract We explore variation in the interpretation of attested novel compound nouns in English, especially the contribution of constituent polysemy to this diversity. Our results show that effects of polysemy are pervasive in compound interpretation, contributing both to interpretational diversity and to perceived difficulty of interpretation. The higher the uncertainty about the concept represented by the head noun, based on existing compounds with that head, the greater the diversity of interpretations across speakers and the more difficult, on average, they find it to come up with a meaning.

The complex interactions of context availability, polysemy, word frequency, and orthographic variables during lexical processing.

In this study we examined the interactions of context availability, polysemy, word frequency, and orthographic neighborhood variables during lexical processing. Context availability and polysemy interacted, in that words that were both lower in context availability and had fewer related senses were especially disadvantaged, as was originally reported by Tokowicz and Kroll (2007). Word frequency interacted with both polysemy and context availability, in that the effects of polysemy and context availability were stronger for lower-frequency words. Finally, orthographic neighborhood size and frequency both interacted with polysemy: the effect of polysemy was greater for words with smaller orthographic neighborhoods and a greater number of higher-frequency neighbors. These findings provide support for the context availability hypothesis (Schwanenflugel & Shoben, 1983). Specifically, the feedback activation account (Hino & Lupker, 1996) offers a mechanistic explanation of our findings that is rooted in feedback from semantic to orthographic representations.

Polysemy Advantage with Abstract But Not Concrete Words.

It is a robust finding that ambiguous words are recognized faster than unambiguous words. More recent studies (e.g., Rodd et al. in J Mem Lang 46:245-266, 2002) now indicate that this ambiguity advantage may in reality be a polysemy advantage: caused by related senses (polysemy) rather than unrelated meanings (homonymy). We report two lexical decision studies that investigated the effects of polysemy with new word sets. In both studies, polysemy was factorially manipulated while homonymy was controlled for. In Experiment 1, where the stimulus set consisted solely of concrete nouns, there was no effect of polysemy. However, in Experiment 2, where the stimulus set consisted of a mix of abstract nouns, verbs, and adjectives, there was a significant polysemy advantage. Together, these two studies strongly suggest that polysemy affects abstract but not concrete nouns. In addition, they rule out several alternative explanations for these polysemy effects, e.g., sense dominance, age-of-acquisition, familiarity, and semantic diversity.

The potentials and limitations of modelling concept concreteness in computational semantic lexicons with dictionary definitions

This paper explores the feasibility of modelling concept concreteness perceived by humans and representing it in computational semantic lexicons, addressing an issue at the crossroads of computational linguistics, lexicography, and psycholinguistics. The inherent distinction between concrete words and abstract words in psychology has relied mostly on subjective human ratings. This practice is hardly scalable and does not consider the effect of polysemy. In view of this, we attempt to obtain a measure of concreteness from dictionary definitions comparable to human judgement, capitalising on conventional lexicographic assumptions and the regularities exhibited in the surface structures of sense definitions. The structural pattern of a definition is analysed and scored on a 7-point scale of concreteness ratings. The definition scores turned out to be quite effective for a dichotomous distinction between concrete and abstract concepts and more consistent with human ratings for the former. Beyond the two-way distinction, however, the results were more variable. The study has thus revealed the potentials and limitations of our approach, suggesting that different defining styles probably reflect the describability of concepts, and describability alone may not be sufficient for differentiating the degree of concreteness. The range of definition patterns has to be reconsidered, in combination with other inseparable factors constituting our perception of concreteness, for better modelling on a finer scale of concreteness distinction to enrich semantic lexicons for natural language processing.

L'influence de la richesse sémantique dans la reconnaissance visuelle des mots émotionnels.

The aim of this study was to expand our knowledge of the influence of emotional valence on visual word recognition by answering two questions. The first was to examine whether the emotional valence effect is sensitive to different types of task requirements, and the second was to examine whether words polysemy can modulate the effect of emotional valence. For this purpose, we manipulated orthogonally emotional valence (negative, positive and neutral words) and polysemy (polysemous vs. non polysemous words) in two versions of the lexical-decision task (one with legal nonwords and one with illegal nonwords). Results showed an effect of task: emotional valence and polysemy influenced lexical decision latencies only in the legal version of the lexical-decision task. Furthermore, results showed that the effect of polysemy was dependant on emotional valence. We observed a facilitation of polysemy for neutral words but not for emotional ones. Finally this experiment also showed that polysemy modulates the emotional valence effect. The facilitation observed for non polysemous emotional words compared to non polysemous neutral words disappeared for polysemous words. These findings fit with other studies showing facilitation for emotional word recognition and allow conclusions concerning the role of semantics on emotional word recognition.

The Development of Polysemy and Frequency Use in English Second Language Speakers

Spoken language data were collected from six adult second language (L2) English learners over a year‐long period in order to explore the development of word polysemy and frequency use. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the first analysis, the growth of WordNet polysemy values and CELEX word frequency values were examined. For both indexes, significant growth was demonstrated from the 2nd to the 16th week of observation, after which values remained stable. Growth in word polysemy values also correlated with changes in word frequency, supporting the notion that frequency and polysemy effects in word use are related. A second analysis used the WordNet dictionary to explore qualitative changes in word sense use concerning six frequent lexical items in the learner corpus (think, know, place, work, play, and name). A qualitative analysis compared normalized frequencies for each word sense in the first trimester of the study to the later trimesters. Differences in the number of word senses used across trimesters were found for all six words. Analyses 1 and 2, taken together, support the notion that L2 learners begin to use words that have the potential for more senses during the first 4 months; learners then begin to extend the core meanings of these polysemous words. These findings provide further insights into the development of lexical proficiency in L2 learners and the growth of lexical networks.

The effect of polysemy on processing of Serbian nouns

It has been shown that while multiple unrelated meanings of a word (e.g. bank) increase processing latency, polysemy, that is multiple related word senses (e.g. paper) produce faster responses (Rodd, Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 2002; Klepousniotou, 2002). The goal of this study was to explore the effect of polysemy on word processing in Serbian. The outcomes of three lexical decision experiments have shown that polysemous words are processed faster. In addition, lemma frequency and number of related senses did not interact. Finally, a measure that combines lemma frequency and number of related senses into a single metric is proposed. This measure is information residual, initially applied on derivational morphology (Moscoso del Prado Mart?n, Kostic & Baayen, 2004). In this study the information residual is a difference between the amount of information (bit) derived from lemma frequency and the entropy of a polysemic cluster. Since relative frequencies of different word senses of a given word in Serbian are currently not available, maximum entropy (log N) was used as an approximation. The outcome of this study indicates that cognitive system is sensitive not only to the entropy of derivational clusters, but polysemic clusters as well.

The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence

Most words in natural language are polysemous, that is, they can be used in more than one way. For example, paper can be used to refer to a substance made out of wood pulp or to a daily publication printed on that substance. Although virtually every sentence contains polysemy, there is little agreement as to how polysemy is represented in the mental lexicon. Do different uses of polysemous words involve access to a single representation or do our minds store distinct representations for each different sense? Here we investigated priming between senses with a combination of behavioral and magnetoencephalographic measures in order to test whether different senses of the same word involve identity or mere formal and semantic similarity. Our results show that polysemy effects are clearly distinct from similarity effects bilaterally. In the left hemisphere, sense-relatedness elicited shorter latencies of the M350 source, which has been hypothesized to index lexical activation. Concurrent activity in the right hemisphere, on the other hand, peaked later for sense-related than for unrelated target stimuli, suggesting competition between related senses. The obtained pattern of results supports models in which the representation of polysemy involves both representational identity and difference: Related senses connect to same abstract lexical representation, but are distinctly listed within that representation.

The impact of feedback semantics in visual word recognition: number-of-features effects in lexical decision and naming tasks.

The notion of feedback activation from semantics to both orthography and phonology has recently been used to explain a number of semantic effects in visual word recognition, including polysemy effects (Hino & Lupker, 1996; Pexman & Lupker, 1999) and synonym effects (Pecher, 2001). In the present research, we tested an account based on feedback activation by investigating a new semantic variable: number of features (NOF). Words with high NOF (e.g., LION) should activate richer semantic representations than do words with low NOF (e.g., LIME). As a result, the feedback activation from semantics to orthographic and phonological representations should be greater for high-NOF words, which should produce superior lexical decision task (LDT) and naming task performance. The predicted facilitory NOF effects were observed in both LDT and naming.

Ambiguity and visual word recognition: can feedback explain both homophone and polysemy effects?

In a lexical-decision task (LDT), Hino and Lupker (1996) reported a polysemy effect (faster response times for polysemous words [e.g., BANK]), and attributed this effect to enhanced feedback from the semantic system to orthographic units, for polysemous words. Using the same task, Pexman, Lupker, and Jared (in review) reported a homophone effect (slower response times for homophonic words [e.g., MAID]) and attributed this effect to inconsistent feedback from the phonological system to orthographic units, for homophones. In the present paper we test two predictions derived from this feedback explanation: Polysemy and homophone effects should (a) co-occur in a standard LDT (with pseudoword foils) and (b) both be larger with pseudohomophones (e.g., BRANE) as foils in LDT. The results supported both predictions.

Polysemy effects in word naming.

Abstract The present research examined the influence of polysemy on word naming. Naming was faster to polysemous than to nonpolysemous words. Moreover, polysemy interacted with word frequency such that the facilitative effects of polysemy were isolated to naming of low-frequency words. These findings are discussed with reference to the distributed models of Masson (1991, 1995; Borowsky & Masson, 1996; Masson & Borowsky, 1995) and Kawamoto, Ferrar, and Kello (1994). Resume La presente recherche examinait l'influence de la polysemie sur la designation des noms. Pour la designation, on choisissait plus rapidement des mots polysemiques plutot que des mots non polysemiques. En outre, la polysemie interagissait avec la frequence des mots de telle sorte que les effets facilitateurs de la polysemie etaient isoles a la designation de mots a basse frequence. Ces conclusions sont discutees en reference aux modeles repartis de Masson (1991, 1995; Borowsky & Masson, 1996; Masson & Borowsky, 1995) ainsi que Kawamoto, Ferrar et Kello (1994). The goal of reading is to extract meaning from printed text. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that semantics plays a role in the processing of single words. One semantic variable that has been used to investigate this assumption is polysemy. Polysemy (or ambiguity) refers to the number of meanings associated with a word. For example, the polysemous word chest can mean a body part or a piece of furniture, whereas the nonpolysemous word lake has a single meaning referring to a body of water. Kawamoto, Ferrar, and Kello (1994) and Masson and his colleagues (Borowsky & Masson, 1996; Masson, 1991, 1995; Masson & Borowsky, 1995) have implemented distributed models that provide explicit accounts of how polysemy should affect processing of single words. In both of these models, polysemy is predicted to facilitate lexical decisions, a prediction that is generally supported by the empirical evidence. For example, in recent papers, both Hino and Lupker (1996) and Borowsky and Masson (1996) reported that lexical decisions are faster to polysemous than to nonpolysemous words. For naming, however, the models diverge. The Kawamoto et al. model leads to the prediction that polysemy should facilitate naming, a prediction that has been supported with evidence from Hino and Lupker who found that polysemous words were named faster than nonpolysemous words. In contrast, Masson's model predicts that polysemy does not affect naming. This prediction has been supported by evidence from Borowsky and Masson showing that polysemy did not affect naming performance. Given the divergence of the models concerning polysemy effects in naming, and given the contradictory evidence of Hino and Lupker versus Borowsky and Masson, the goal of the present research was to provide a further empirical investigation of polysemy effects in naming. KAWAMOTO ET AL. (1994) MODEL The Kawamoto et al. (1994) model is built on the notion that for a polysemous word there is one orthographic pattern (or entry) but more than one semantic pattern (i.e., more than one meaning). The existence of more than one meaning is such that when a polysemous word is presented, activation at the semantic level may be unstable and inconsistent. To compensate for this inconsistency and uncertainty at the semantic level, the model's learning algorithm was tailored to give a relatively larger influence to weights at the orthographic layer than to those at the semantic layer for polysemous words. In contrast, nonpolysemous words activate only single patterns at both the orthographic and semantic layers and thus the learning algorithm generates weights that are similar at the orthographic and semantic layers. Kawamoto et al. assume that lexical decisions are based primarily on orthography. Accordingly, the model generates polysemy effects in lexical decisions because of the greater influence of the orthographic weights for polysemous words as compared to those for nonpolysemous words. …

The effects of polysemy for Japanese katakana words

In these experiments, the effects of polysemy were examined as a function of word frequency for Japanese katakana words, words which have consistent character-to-sound correspondences. In the lexical decision task, an additive relationship was observed between polysemy and frequency (i.e., polysemy effects were identical for high and low frequency katakana words). In the naming task, although no word frequency effect was observed, there was a significant polysemy effect which, as in the lexical decision task, was identical for high and low frequency words. The implications of these results for conclusions about the loci of polysemy and frequency effects in lexical decision and naming tasks are discussed.

Effects of polysemy in lexical decision and naming: An alternative to lexical access accounts.

The effects of polysemy (number of meanings) and word frequency were examined in lexical decision and naming tasks. Polysemy effects were observed in both tasks. In the lexical decision task, high- and low-frequency words produced identical polysemy effects. In the naming task, however, polysemy interacted with frequency, with polysemy effects being limited to low-frequency words. When degraded stimuli were used in both tasks, the interaction appeared not only in naming but also in lexical decision. Because stimulus degradation also produced an effect of spelling-sound regularity in the lexical decision task, the different relationships between polysemy and frequency appear to be due to whether responding was based primarily on orthographic or phonological codes. As such, the effects of polysemy seem to be due to the nature of task-specific processes. An explanation in terms of M. S. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland's (1989) and D. C. Plaut and J. L. McClelland's (1993) parallel distributed processing models is proposed. One of the most fundamental issues in reading research is how a word's meaning is derived from the processing of a visual input. Chumbley and Balota (1984) suggested that essentially all major models of word recognition, such as Morton's (1969) logogen model, Becker's (1980) verification model, and Forster's (1976) lexical search model, assume at least two processes are involved. The first is the process of accessing the lexicon and the second is the process of meaning determination. The verification model and the lexical search model assume that lexical access involves a sequential matching process between information extracted from the visual stimulus and lexical representations, with representations for higher frequency words checked first. The logogen model assumes differential threshold values for the lexical representations depending

Effects of polysemy in lexical decision and naming: An alternative to lexical access accounts.

Effects of polysemy in lexical decision and naming: An alternative to lexical access accounts.

The effect of polysemy on lexical decision time: now you see it, now you don't.

Gernsbacher (1984) found that number of word meanings (polysemy) did not influence lexical decision time when it was operationalized as number of dictionary definitions. This finding supports her contention that subjects do not store all possible dictionary meanings for words in memory. The present experiments extended Gernsbacher's research by determining whether more psychologically valid measures of polysemy affect lexical decision time. Three metrics were used to represent the meanings that subjects actually access from memory (accessible polysemy): (1) the first meanings subjects think of when asked to define stimulus words, (2) all the meanings subjects generate for words, and (3) the average number of meanings subjects generate. The results showed that the second and third metrics of polysemy influenced lexical decision time, whereas the first metric (representing mostly the access to dominant meanings for words) only approached significance.