Semantic Ambiguity Resolution Research Articles

Negative priming from the non-selected meaning of the homograph.

In this article we address the question of whether semantic ambiguity resolution involves the central inhibition of the non-selected meaning of a homograph. Most previous studies on this topic have either not clearly required semantic selection, or have induced this disambiguation by manipulating the context. These studies have not observed clear inhibitory effects on the non-selected meaning of the type studied in negative priming. We suggest that this kind of central inhibition may depend on task demands, and will be more easily observed in tasks where meaning selection is clearly required and is not made easier by cueing or context. In this study, participants had to perform a semantic judgment task in the prime display. Semantic priming from both the selected and the non-selected meaning of homographs was measured by showing facilitation for the selected meaning and inhibitory effects of the non-selected meaning. Participants with slow but accurate performance during the task were mainly responsible for this semantic negative priming effect, reflecting the role of inhibition on task-oriented control. The 'negative priming' effect is discussed in relation to current theories of attentional selection.

The influence of prosodic phrasal boundaries on the resolution of semantic lexical ambiguity

Two experiments explored the effect of two levels of prosodic phrasing, the intonational phrase (IPh), and phonological phrase (PPh), on the interpretation of ambiguous words in sentences. In experiment 1, polysemous words were presented in semantically neutral sentence-initial clauses, followed by either an IPh or PPh boundary. A second clause resolved the ambiguity. End-of-sentence judgment times showed that reanalysis to the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous word took longer following IPh than PPh boundaries, suggesting that more extensive interpretive processing had taken place following the higher-level boundary. In experiment 2, strongly-biased polysemous words were presented in clauses weakly biased toward their subordinate interpretation, followed by either an IPh or PPh boundary. Following IPh boundaries, visually presented semantic associates of the subordinate meaning of the polysemous word were named faster than targets associated with the dominant meaning. This difference was not found for PPh conditions. Phonological and phonetic analyses will be presented. It will be argued that these processing effects cannot be explained solely on the basis of durational differences between IPh and PPh boundaries. The results support the view that the human sentence processor builds a prosodic representation and is guided by it during semantic interpretation. [Work supported by NIMH.]

Effects of intonation pattern of synthesized and natural speech upon listener resolution of semantic ambiguity.

The semantically ambiguous phrase, "I thought so," was tape-recorded using three sources: (1) a professional radio announcer, (2) a computer speech synthesizer employing within-word intonation glides, and (3) a computer speech synthesizer without glides. Each subject heard four intonation patterns from one source and marked the "speaker's" apparent intended meaning for each utterance: (A) "and I was right," (B) "but I was wrong," or (C) "Can't tell which the speaker meant." Analyses indicated: (1) For the announcer and synthesized glide versions, listeners inferred confirmation from falling intonation on thought, and denial from rising thought. (2) Percentages of "Can't tell which the speaker meant" responses and intra-subject response agreements indicated that the announcer utterances were least ambiguous, while the synthesized non-glide utterances were most ambiguous.