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- Volume 11, Issue, 2016
The Mental Lexicon - Volume 11, Issue 3, 2016
Volume 11, Issue 3, 2016
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Meta-megastudies
Author(s): James Myerspp.: 329–349 (21)More LessCross-linguistic data have always been of interest to mental lexicon researchers, but only now are technological developments beginning to make it possible to treat language as a random variable, in an approach we dub meta-megastudies. A meta-megastudy uses regression techniques to tease apart not just factors that are partially confounded across items within languages, as in traditional megastudies, but also factors partially confounded across languages. While large-scale meta-megastudies will be logistically challenging, they promise great theoretical benefits and are becoming ever more feasible via Web-based coordination between independent research groups.
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Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain
Author(s): Chris Westburypp.: 350–374 (25)More LessThere is a distinction in scientific explanation between the explanandum, statements describing the empirical phenomenon to be explained, and the explanans, statements describing the evidence that allow one to predict that phenomenon. To avoid tautology, these sets of statements must refer to distinct domains. A scientific explanation of semantics must be grounded in explanans that appeal to entities from non-semantic domains. I consider as examples eight candidate domains (including affect, lexical or sub-word co-occurrence, mental simulation, and associative learning) that could ground semantics. Following Wittgenstein (1954), I propose adjudicating between these different domains is difficult because of the reification of a word’s ‘meaning’ as an atomistic unit. If we abandon the idea of the meaning of a word as being an atomistic unit and instead think of word meaning as a set of dynamic and disparate embodied states unified by a shared label, many apparent problems associated with identifying a meaning’s ‘true’ explanans disappear. Semantics can be considered as sets of weighted constraints that are individually sufficient for specifying and labeling a subjectively-recognizable location in the high dimensional state space defined by our neural activity.
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Why we need to investigate casual speech to truly understand language production, processing and the mental lexicon
Author(s): Benjamin V. Tucker and Mirjam Ernestuspp.: 375–400 (26)More LessThe majority of studies addressing psycholinguistic questions focus on speech produced and processed in a careful, laboratory speech style. This ‘careful’ speech is very different from the speech that listeners encounter in casual conversations. This article argues that research on casual speech is necessary to show the validity of conclusions based on careful speech. Moreover, research on casual speech produces new insights and questions on the processes underlying communication and on the mental lexicon that cannot be revealed by research using careful speech. This article first places research on casual speech in its historic perspective. It then provides many examples of how casual speech differs from careful speech and shows that these differences may have important implications for psycholinguistic theories. Subsequently, the article discusses the challenges that research on casual speech faces, which stem from the high variability of this speech style, its necessary casual context, and that casual speech is connected speech. We also present opportunities for research on casual speech, mostly in the form of new experimental methods that facilitate research on connected speech. However, real progress can only be made if these new methods are combined with advanced (still to be developed) statistical techniques.
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Hebrew adjective lexicons in developmental perspective
Author(s): Dorit Ravid, Amalia Bar-On, Ronit Levie and Odelia Douanipp.: 401–428 (28)More LessObjective frequency does not always provide reliable information about lexical distributions across individuals’ development. We propose the subjective ranking by experts of lexical items’ register in the sense of ‘levels of linguistic usage’, which has been independently linked to AoA, as an alternative. This proposal was tested in Hebrew, a language showing marked distinctions between the everyday colloquial style and more formal, historically-related types of expression. A list of over 3,500 Hebrew adjectives in 19 morphological categories was compiled from dictionary sources. All adjectives on the list were ranked on a 1–5 linguistic register scale by 329 language expert judges. A Model Based Latent Class Analysis yielded five high-agreement groups of adjectives with mean register scores from 1.44 to 4.51, taken to represent five developmentally consecutive adjective lexicons. Semantic and morphological analyses indicated a rise in the abstractness and specificity of adjectives in the five lexicons, with concurrent changes in their morphological makeup. Two morphological categories emerged as the major components of the Modern Hebrew adjective lexicon: Resultative patterns, expressing states, and i-suffixed denominals, expressing nominal attributes. The study showed that subjective register classification may constitute a yardstick in development, with implications for other languages where register judgements can apply.
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Functionalism in the lexicon
Author(s): Russell Richiepp.: 429–466 (38)More LessWhy do languages have the words they have, and not some other set of words? While certainly there is some arbitrariness in the lexicon (English ‘frog’ vs. Spanish ‘rana’), there is just as surely some systematicity or functionality in it as well. What exactly might the nature of this systematicity or functionality be? For example, might the lexicon be efficiently adapted for communication, learning, memory storage, retrieval, or other cognitive functions? This paper critically reviews evidence that natural language lexicons efficiently carve up semantic fields (e.g., color, space, kinship) and have phonological forms that are similarly efficient when the aggregate lexicon is considered. The paper also suggests additional ways functionalism in lexicons might be assessed, and speculates on how functional lexicons may have arisen.
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Morphological schemas
Author(s): Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audringpp.: 467–493 (27)More LessWe propose a theory of the lexicon in which rules of grammar, encoded as declarative schemas, are lexical items containing variables. We develop a notation to encode precise relations among lexical items and show how this differs from the standard notion of inheritance. We also show how schemas can play both a generative role, acting as productive rules, and also a relational role, where they codify nonproductive but nevertheless prolific patterns within the lexicon. We then show how this theory of lexical relations can be embedded directly into a theory of lexical access and lexical processing, such that it can make direct contact with experimental findings.
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