Лексическая неоднозначность в экспериментальных исследованиях: метаанализ

Author(s):  
Анжелика Дубасова

The article analyses experimental studies of lexical ambiguity (polysemy and homonymy). In total, 42 papers published between 1981 and 2017 were selected for analysis. Selected works were analyzed from the point of view of a) interaction of the main factors of lexical ambiguity resolution (meaning dominance and context), b) modularity/interactivity of language systems. The choice of these issues was caused by the fact that, despite a significant number of papers addressing them, a common theoretical model of lexical ambiguity resolution is still missing. The analysis concluded that none of the existing models could be chosen as the only true one. I believe that it is more promising to combine all models into one; in this case, we should not talk about “models” but about “algorithms” or “strategies”. This merge is compatible with the results of studies of hemispheric asymmetry, which showed that the right and left hemispheres differently process ambiguous words. This difference is projected on the difference between the two main points of view on language processing, interactive and modular. Also, as a result of the analysis, the properties of meaning dominance and context as the main factors influencing the perception of ambiguity are summarized, and the ways and possibilities of their interaction are determined. These factors can participate in the process of resolving ambiguity autonomously or together, with different functions, speed, and levels of perception.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 148
Author(s):  
Huijun Tang

English Language ambiguity has always been one of the major concerns of psycholinguistic research. A number of studies have been carried out to investigate different types of ambiguity resolution, including phonological ambiguity resolution, lexical ambiguity resolution, syntactic ambiguity resolution and pragmatic ambiguity resolution. Studies of lexical ambiguity resolution have found that lexically ambiguous words with two meanings of the same frequency took longer to read than lexically unambiguous words, suggesting that different meanings of ambiguous words compete for integration to the local context. This paper gives an overview of the classical psycholinguistic studies on English lexical ambiguity resolution which employed the eye-tracking technology.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. e0176281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Angwin ◽  
Nadeeka N. W. Dissanayaka ◽  
Katie L. McMahon ◽  
Peter A. Silburn ◽  
David A. Copland

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-283
Author(s):  
Vera Lee-Schoenfeld ◽  
Anya Lunden

Abstract This paper explores fronted verb phrases in German, drawing attention to the difference between passive/unaccusative VPs and fronted agentive vPs. While both kinds of verb phrases have been discussed in the literature as being frontable, it has been largely overlooked that fronted vPs typically come with a certain kind of post-fronting context and a rise-fall or bridge-contour intonation, which is characteristic of I-topicalization. We observe that, unlike VPs, agentive vPs essentially need to be I-topics, with a high tone at the right edge of the fronted domain, in order to be frontable. Given the special context required for fronted vPs, the situation described by the vP does not contain new information but must already have been under discussion and is now being commented on. We present the results of two experimental studies and appeal to the thetic/categorical distinction to offer a new angle on the definiteness effect that has been associated with fronted verb phrases. We propose that a subject-containing fronted vP is associated with a thetic rather than the default categorical judgment, which means that the fronted subject and predicate form only one information-structural unit (a topic) rather than two (topic and comment). Contributing to the literature on theticity, we observe that, unlike in non-fronting thetic statements, the subject in fronted vPs cannot be a true definite. We attribute this to clashing intonation restrictions on theticity in non-fronting constructions versus theticity in just the fronted portion of a sentence.


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