Nouns In Contexts Research Articles

The influence of concreteness on emotional nouns valence processing: An ERP study

<p id="p00010">Rapid responses to emotional words play a considerable role in human social communication. It has been reported that individuals have an advantage to process emotional words in comparison with neutral words. While it is crucial to distinguish between words that convey concrete concepts and abstract concepts in emotional words processing, because many studies have found that concrete words (e.g., “desk”) are processed more quickly and efficiently than abstract words (e.g., “truth”), which is termed as the concreteness effects. However, much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, our understanding of abstract concepts is limited, and the way in which abstract concepts are represented has received a great deal of research interest. Recent research has found an “abstractness effect”, that is, a processing advantage of abstract words over concrete words, suggesting the role of affective information in the representation of abstract concepts. <break/>In the present study, we distinguished emotional nouns into concrete concepts and abstract concepts to explore potential differences in processing, as measured by event-related potentials. A dual-target RSVP task was employed to explore the processing stages of concrete and abstract nouns in the limited attention context. A total of 24 right-handed participants (8 males) aged from 18 to 30 years old took part in this study in exchange for payment. Brain electrical activity was recorded by a 64-channel system composing of tin electrodes mounted in an elastic cap according to the international 10-20 System. In addition to behavioral responses, P1, N170, and LPC components were selected as indicators of early and late processing stages of emotional nouns. <break/>The behavioral results showed that there was no concreteness effect or abstractness effect of emotional nouns in the context of limited attentional resources, while it reflected a “negative bias” for emotion effect. ERP results suggested N170 component was modulated by emotion valence and concreteness, that emotional nouns elicited significantly larger N170 amplitude than neutral nouns, and concrete nouns elicited significantly larger N170 amplitude than abstract nouns. Above two modulation patterns of N170 component were observed in the left hemisphere, but not in the right hemisphere. LPC component was also modulated by emotion valence and concreteness, that emotional nouns elicited significantly LPC amplitude than neutral nouns, while in contrast to previous studies, concrete nouns elicited significantly larger LPC amplitude than abstract nouns, which might reflect the attention resource allocation or the effect of emotional information on concreteness effect. Last but not least, there was an interaction effect between concreteness and emotion valence, that positive, negative, and neutral of abstract nouns could be distinguished by LPC amplitude respectively, while it could only differentiate emotional concrete nouns from non-emotional nouns. The late stage of emotional noun processing was in accordance with the abstractness effect. <break/>Emotion valence and concreteness both modulate the ERP components in the early and late stages of noun processing in the limited attention context. In the late processing stage, LPC amplitude distinguishing abstract nouns with different valence, which indicates that abstract nouns had more emotional valence than concrete nouns, and provides electrophysiological evidence for the view that abstract words contain more emotional information.

Frame-based instruction: Teaching polysemous nouns in the L2

Abstract Across the various L2 teaching methodologies, polysemy represents a mostly neglected phenomenon. Due to the widespread belief that multiple meaning extensions are largely arbitrary as well as due to the lack of a systematic teaching method, rote learning of polysemous word meanings frequently appears to be a common practice in L2 classrooms. A cognitive semantic view of polysemy claims that polysemous meaning extensions are motivated and form a systematic network (Lakoff 1987). Against this backdrop, this article introduces a CL-based learning/teaching technique in order to systematically approximate the intended meanings of polysemous L2 nouns in context. ‘Frame-based instruction’ capitalizes on the notion of frame-inherent ‘slots’ and ‘fillers’ (cf., e.g., Barsalou 1992; Martin 1997; Minsky 1975). According to this view, polysemy arises through context- dependent slot-filler configurations. The method grants L2 learners access to these structures through a systematic array of questions scanning generic slots within the contextual frame and the polyseme-frame. In doing so, it guides them to unveil the intended polysemous word meaning in context in a step-by-step fashion. After an illustration of the method on the basis of a practical example, an empirical study is presented which tested the functionality of frame-based instruction in a classroom setting with 13-year-old EFL learners in Austria. Although the experiment produced a statistical null result, several future avenues of research crystallized with regard to an improved implementation of the method.

The interpretation of Brazilian Portuguese bare singulars in neutral contexts

Abstract The interpretation of Bare Singular count nouns (henceforth BS nouns) has been at the center of much debate in the literature on countability in Brazilian Portuguese. In this paper, we ad- dress the question whether BS nouns may only be interpreted as mass nouns or as names of kinds, or whether they may also be interpreted as object denoting nouns. It is generally agreed that BS nouns can be interpreted as names of kinds. Furthermore, Beviláqua and Pires de Oliveira (2014) show that BS nouns are interpreted as mass nouns in contexts that favor a mass interpretation. However, the preferred interpretation of BS nouns in neutral contexts (i.e. contexts that favor neither a count nor a mass interpretation) has never been investigated experimentally. We present the results of two experiments, which show that speakers tend to interpret BS nouns as count nouns in neutral contexts.

MEG evidence for conceptual combination but not numeral quantification in the left anterior temporal lobe during language production.

The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) has risen as a leading candidate for a brain locus of composition in language; yet the computational details of its function are unknown. Although most literature discusses it as a combinatory region in very general terms, it has also been proposed to reflect the more specific function of conceptual combination, which in the classic use of this term mainly pertains to the combination of open class words with obvious conceptual contributions. We aimed to distinguish between these two possibilities by contrasting plural nouns in contexts where they were either preceded by a color modifier (“red cups”), eliciting conceptual combination, or by a number word (“two cups”), eliciting numeral quantification but no conceptual combination. This contrast was chosen because within a production task, it allows the manipulation of composition type while keeping the physical stimulus constant: a display of two red cups can be named as “two cups” or “red cups” depending on the task instruction. These utterances were compared to productions of two-word number and color lists, intended as non-combinatory control conditions. Magnetoencephalography activity was recorded during the planning for production, prior to motion artifacts. As expected on the basis of comprehension studies, color modification elicited increased LATL activity as compared to color lists, demonstrating that this basic combinatory effect is strongly crossmodal. However, numeral quantification did not elicit a parallel effect, suggesting that the function of the LATL is (i) semantic and not syntactic (given that both color modification and numeral quantification involve syntactic composition) and (ii) corresponds more closely to the classical psychological notion of conceptual combination as opposed to a more general semantic combinatory function.

Korean EFL Learners’ Indefinite Article Use with Four Types of Abstract Nouns

The study investigates Korean-speaking EFL learners’ article use with four different categories of abstract nouns. The categories, which are based on boundedness and countability, are state nouns, continuous-action nouns, non-continuous action nouns, and bounded independent nouns. Fifty Korean intermediate-level learners of English participated in a forced choice task in which they chose an indefinite article (a/n) or null article with these nouns in context. A one-way analysis of variance compared accuracy rates across the four different types of abstract nouns. The results showed that learners’ article use is influenced by noun type. The accuracy rate was highest for the bounded independent and lowest for the non-continuous action nouns. We propose that the heterogeneous nature of the category of abstract nouns should be addressed in research and pedagogy.

Hebrew Derived Nouns in Context: A Developmental Perspective

Derived nouns constitute a productive group of abstract nouns in Hebrew, consisting of action nominals as well as other verb-related nouns in other morphological patterns. This study traces the route taken by Hebrew-speaking children, adolescents and adults on a written sentence-construction test. The test consisted of six pairs of derived nouns sharing the same root but having different meanings (analogous to English pairs like process-procedure, destiny-destination) and was administered to 110 native speakers of Hebrew (school-goers in grades VI, VIII, and XI and two groups of adults, younger and older). Results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses point to the influence of various semantic factors on later lexical development on the one hand, and a close semantic-syntactic interdependency, on the other.