Meaning Of Polysemous Word Research Articles

“Keeping Words in Context”: Language Policy and Social Identification in an Immigrant Job Training Program

ABSTRACT This ethnography examines how teachers interpret and enact language-in-education policies in an adult ESL classroom in the United States, where students simultaneously received job training as Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). We draw on postmodern and interpretive lenses from the ethnography of communication, considering how workforce-oriented language policies impact teachers’ agency during speech events when classroom participants discuss the meanings of unknown words. We assert that during talk about word meanings (semantics), models of social identity formed, sometimes in conflict with the sociocognitive complexities of second language acquisition. Findings indicate that the meanings of polysemous words were narrowed solely to the immediate healthcare context, and that instructional time often focused on teaching lexis common on multiple-choice tests, preparing students for their final CNA examination. Implications for teachers and policy makers are discussed, including the potentially equalizing applications of polysemic research within workforce language instructional models.

Translation Difficulties of Polysemous Words from English into Arabic: A Case Study of Yemeni EFL University Students

This research paper aims to shed light on one of the Arabic-speaking EFL learners' lexical problems, concerning translating words used in context from English into Arabic. It focused on translating polysemous words when they are used both in their direct core and indirect secondary meanings. In order to investigate this problem, a translation test was administered to a sample comprised 28 male and female students studying English at the Faculty of Education- Yafea, University of Aden, Yemen. The test consisted of 10 English sentences used to collect quantitative data from the participants. Each five sentences tested one polysemous word (break and sound,). The meanings of the polysemous words in the first sentence in each five sentences is direct, core meaning; whereas their meanings in the other 4 sentences are indirect secondary meanings. Based on the results of the study, it was found that Arabic-speaking EFL learners were unable to a great extent to translate the words well, especially when those words were used in their indirect secondary meanings. Based on the results, this research suggested that polysemous words should be given much attention in ELT B.educational courses at all stages of English language learning and teaching because of students' drastic incompetence in understanding the different meanings of polysemous words.

The Effect of Semantic Similarity on Learning Ambiguous Words in a Second Language: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Ambiguous words have multiple meanings. How these multiple meanings interact with each other during ambiguous word learning remains unclear. The current study adopted an event-related potentials (ERPs) technique to explore whether there is an interaction between two meanings when learning second language (L2) ambiguous words and how semantic similarity affects ambiguous word learning. In order to explore this issue, Chinese–English bilinguals were asked to learn pseudowords, which were paired with either two related new meanings (polysemes), two unrelated new meanings (homonyms), or one single new meaning (monosomies) over 2 consecutive days. ERP results revealed that learning the second meaning of a homonym induced a more negative N400 than the first meaning; learning the second meaning of a polyseme tended to produce a more positive late component (LPC) than the first meaning. These results indicate that the first meaning of homonyms may interfere with learning their second meaning. However, the first meaning of polysemous words may facilitate learning their second meaning. The current findings suggest that different mechanisms might be involved in learning L2 homonyms and polysemes.

The Concept “Semantic Invariant" as a Cognitive Term

Introduction. The purpose of the paper is to prove the semantic integrity of the meanings of polysemous words based on the use of the concepts “semantic network“ and “lexical invariant“. The relevance of this study lies in the lack of sufficient support of semantic integrity of lexemes, since there are contradictory linguistic data in favor of the so-called list theory of word representation in the mental lexicon. We put forward the hypothesis of network structuring of word meanings based on the “lexical invariant“, understood as a set of dominant basic semantic components, which underlie contextual meanings in one of their configurations. We pointed out the characteristic features and advantages of the network model of polysemous words as an open system capable of building an unlimited number of connections. The study is also concerned with the determination of the way the meanings are mapped in the semantic space of the lexicon by means of revealing the content of the semantic structures of the polysemous words.Methodology and sources. The paper presents an empirical invariant-component method of analyzing a polysemous word “key“.Results and discussion. The main results of the study indicate that there are numerous interconnected semantic networks of polysemous words in the lexicon. They function as multi-level configurations of meanings, which are cemented by dominant invariant meanings. Invariant meanings are eventually formed as a result of multiple use of all metaphorical meanings clusters, which allow native speakers to effectively navigate in the surrounding language environment.Conclusion. The results of our study have proved the idea that native speakers do not need detailed information (numerous semantic components) to interpret this or that meaning. The number of components they use in everyday communication is limited but sufficient for general understanding of the words and texts contents. The research results enabled us to draw a conclusion that in order to preserve the semantic integrity of a word structure, the number of meanings must remain within the limits of the invariant semantic components. The invariant lexical components form clusters of integral and differential types that combined in different configurations form a word desired meaning.

A WSD Model for Corpus Construction

A common difficulty in the annotation of large corpora is the disambiguation of the meanings of polysemous words, a task which currently depends on unassisted manual checking by human experts. In this paper, we propose RFR-SUM, an approach to the automatic disambiguation of polysemous Chinese words that calculates and then sums the collocational strengths of words in the local context of a given word. The approach is efficient in that it learns from a small annotated corpus. It can also be used to support manual checking by automatically identifying sentences where usages are borderline and require a human decision. Testing has shown that RFR-SUM outperforms two other commonly used WSD approaches.

Understanding words in context: The role of Broca's area in word comprehension

What role does meaning selection play in word comprehension, and what neural systems support this selection process? Most words have multiple meanings and are therefore ambiguous. This is true of both homonymous words (words that have multiple unrelated meanings) and polysemous words (words that have multiple related meanings). The extant evidence indicates that meaning selection is an integral part of homonym comprehension. However, it is not known whether meaning selection extends to polysemous words, or what neural systems support meaning selection during comprehension. Prior neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence suggest that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) may play a role in resolving competition during language processing. We therefore sought to test the hypotheses that meaning selection is part of polysemous word comprehension, and that the LIFG resolves meaning competition during word comprehension. We tested healthy participants on a version of the triplet lexical decision task, with polysemous and homonymous stimuli. Results suggest that the meanings of polysemous words, like the meanings of homonyms, are selected based on context. However, homonymous and polysemous words differed in how meaning frequency affected meaning selection. We then administered the triplet lexical decision task to patients with LIFG damage to examine whether this region plays a role in context-dependent meaning selection. Results support the hypothesis that the LIFG serves as a top-down biasing mechanism that facilitates rapid meaning selection during word comprehension. We conclude that context-dependent meaning selection is an integral part of word comprehension for both homonyms and polysemous words, and that the LIFG facilitates this selection process.

Het Toetsen van Diepe Woordkennis in een Vreemde Taal

In this article, we report on the construction of a test of deep word knowledge in French as a second language that can be used at advanced levels of proficiency. By 'deep word knowledge' we mean the knowledge of the semantic network of L2-words; our test focuses on the knowledge of the relations between L2-words and the words semantically related to each of these words; part of this is the knowledge of different meanings of polysemous words. In our test, each item consists of an L2-word, i.e. the item word, accompanied by six other L2-words that have or do not have a semantic relation with the item word. The testee has to mark the semantically related words. These relations may be paradigmatic (i.e. cases of synonymy, antonymy, or hyponymy) or syntagmatic (i.e. collocations, ?art-whole relations, or defining terms). The test was pretested on students of different university levels, i.e. advanced and near native students, and also on several reference groups of real native students. The results of the pretest showed the fairly good discriminatingpower of the test: differences between the mean scores of the groups of advanced, near native and native students proved to be significant. The test even discriminates between different levels of native proficiency (the french equivalents of ??, ?A and highschool students). The reliability (Cronbachs a) was estimated separately for the groups of advanced and near native students and proved satisfactory: .84 and .88 respectively. The data of the pretest administration was used in an item analysis procedure to modify and improve the test and to give it its final form. In the near future we will investigate the relationship between the deep word knowledge our test measures and scores on tests of broad, quantitative word knowledge; furthermore we will investigate the power of these two kinds of vocabulary scores to predict integrated language skills, in particular writing ability.

Polysemie En Vertaling In Een Vreemde Taal

In this article we address the question whether polysemous words are more difficult to translate than monosemous words. If the two different meanings of a polysemous word have to be translated by two different words in the target language, the translator wil have to select the right one. We hypothesized that this choice would make the translation of polysemous words a more demanding task. In our investigation we operationalized the notion of difficulty in terms of response time: Does it take more time to translate polysemous words than to translate comparable monosemous words? We created an experimental setting permitting the measurement in milliseconds of the oral translation of words presented in small disambiguating contexts on a monitor. The experimental material consisted of polysemous words and the same number of monosemous words, which were comparable, by matching, in frequency and meaning. The results of our investigation induced us to adjust our hypothesis: Not all meanings of polysemous words seem to be more difficult to translate than monosemous words. The results showed that the more frequent meanings of the polysemous words were translated at about the same rate as their monosemous counterparts, whereas the translation of the less frequent ones took significantly more time than the translation of the comparable monosemous words. Probably, while translating a polysemous word, the translator goes straight to the translation of the most frequent meaning; when he sees that this translation doesn't fit in the given context, he continues his search for the translation that will fit better in the context.