When do languages use the same word for different meanings? The Goldilocks Principle in colexification

Lexical ambiguity is pervasive in language, and often systematic. For instance, the Spanish word "dedo" refers to both a toe and a finger, and this TOE-FINGER ambiguity is found in over 100 languages. Previous work shows that systematic ambiguities involve related meanings. This is attributed to cognitive pressure towards simplicity in language, as it makes lexicons easier to learn and use. The present study examines the interplay between this pressure and the competing pressure for languages to support accurate information transfer. We hypothesize that ambiguity follows a Goldilocks principle that balances the two pressures: meanings are more likely to attach to the same word when they are related to an optimal degree ---neither too much, nor too little. We find support for this principle in data from over 1200 languages and 1400 meanings. Our results thus suggest that universal forces shape the lexicons of natural languages.

Semiotic Essence of Linguistic Ambiguity in the German Poetic Discourse of the XXI Century

The article deals with the problem of the phenomenon of linguistic ambiguity and methods of its resolution in the context of modern German poetic texts, as well as possible communication failures associated with differences in the sociocultural characteristics of the author and recipient. In particular, there are illustrations of ambiguity of the entire poem, when the analyzed concept has a dualistic origin and certain linguo-stylistic means; lexical ambiguity, which main mechanisms are a language game, polysemantic words, chains of key lexical items, allusions; syntactic ambiguity, that is realized through special punctuation and two-way communication, that allowed two different interpretations of the sentence. In addition, the German poetic text is characterized by temporary and permanent types of ambiguity. As part of the study, it was found that the phenomenon of ambiguity can be resolved due to contextual peculiarities, and situations of communicative failure can be avoided by an increase of the level of linguistic and intercultural competence.

Does diacritics‐based lexical disambiguation modulate word frequency, length, and predictability effects? An eye‐movements investigation of processing Arabic diacritics

In Arabic, a predominantly consonantal script that features a high incidence of lexical ambiguity (heterophonic homographs), glyph-like marks called diacritics supply vowel information that clarifies how each consonant should be pronounced, and thereby disambiguate the pronunciation of consonantal strings. Diacritics are typically omitted from print except in situations where a particular homograph is not sufficiently disambiguated by the surrounding context. In three experiments we investigated whether the presence of disambiguating diacritics on target homographs modulates word frequency, length, and predictability effects during reading. In all experiments, the subordinate representation of the target homographs was instantiated by the diacritics (in the diacritized conditions), and by the context subsequent to the target homographs. The results replicated the effects of word frequency (Experiment 1), word length (Experiment 2), and predictability (Experiment 3). However, there was no evidence that diacritics-based disambiguation modulated these effects in the current study. Rather, diacritized targets in all experiments attracted longer first pass and later (go past and/or total fixation count) processing. These costs are suggested to be a manifestation of the subordinate bias effect. Furthermore, in all experiments, the diacritics-based disambiguation facilitated later sentence processing, relative to when the diacritics were absent. The reported findings expand existing knowledge about processing of diacritics, their contribution towards lexical ambiguity resolution, and sentence processing.

LEXICAL AMBIGUITY FOUND IN BEAUTY PRODUCT SLOGANS ON TV ADVERTISEMENTS

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk untuk mengetahui jenis-jenis kedwimaknaan slogan produk kecantikan pada iklan di televisi. Penulis menggunakan teori kedwimaknaan menurut Murphy dan teori makna oleh Leech dalam mendukung analisa ini. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Dalam proses pengumpulan data, penulis mengidentifikasi semua slogan iklan kecantikan pada channel televisi Indonesia yang telah di tentukan, Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa ada dua jenis kedwimaknaan yang ditemukan dalam slogan produk kecantikan pada iklan tersebut. Dua tipe itu adalah polisemi dan homonim. Sedangkan maknanya yaitu konseptual dan konotatif yang sering ditemukan dalam proses analisa data.

EXPRESS: Redesigning the Exploration of Semantic Dynamics – SSD Account in Light of Regression Design

The Semantic Settling Dynamics model (Armstrong & Plaut, 2016) postulated that the seemingly inconsistent effects of lexical ambiguity are, in fact, a systematic manifestation of the specific dynamics that arise as a consequence of the amount of time spent in processing. The model has thus far been tested by prolonging lexical decision and comparing homonymous, polysemous, and unambiguous words in a factorial design. Here, we kept the strategy of task manipulation but tested the model by using continuous measures as indices of the level of lexical ambiguity and their slopes as indices of the effect size. We expressed the size of the polysemy effect as the slope of the effect of entropy of sense probability distribution and the size of the homonymy effect as the redundancy of sense probability distribution. Comparing lexical decision tasks with the shorter and longer time spent in processing, we observed the predicted decrease in the effect of the polysemy level as well as the predicted increase in the effect of homonymy level.

Lexical And Grammatical Ambiguities In Engligsh Texbook For Tenth Grade Students

This study dealt with effort of finding the lexical and grammatical ambiguity in English textbook of Bahasa Inggris for the tenth grade. The objectives of the study were to find out the types of ambiguity and to find out the dominant types of ambiguity in Bahasa Inggris of the tenth grade. The numbers of the data were 21 of reading texts which were taken from English textbook of Bahasa Inggris of the tenth grade. The types of ambiguities were identified based on Fromkin et al theory. The research design used in this research is descriptive qualitative. The data were analyzed by Identifying , classifying, tabulating and interpreting. From 21 reading texts, there were 27 sentences that contained ambiguous meaning. There are two types of ambiguity found in reading texts, they were lexical and grammatical ambiguity. The lexical ambiguity consisted of homonym, polysemy and antonym. While grammatical ambiguity consisted of coordinate structure, negation scope, active or passive meaning, gerund + object or participle modifying a noun, prepositional phrase (PP) as modifier or sentence adjunct, and a head of inner modifier and outer modifier. The dominant type of lexical ambiguity was homonymy with 6 occurrences (20.68%). While the dominant type of grammatical ambiguity was coordinate structure as many as 8 occurrences (27.59%).

What Are Abstract Concepts? On Lexical Ambiguity and Concreteness Ratings

In psycholinguistics, concepts are considered abstract if they do not apply to physical objects that we can touch, see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Psychologists usually distinguish concrete from abstract concepts by means of so-called concreteness ratings. In concreteness rating studies, laypeople are asked to rate the concreteness of words based on the above criterion. The wide use of concreteness ratings motivates an assessment of them. I point out two problems: First, most current concreteness ratings test the intuited concreteness of word forms as opposed to concepts. This ignores the ubiquitous phenomenon of lexical ambiguity. Second, the criterion of abstract concepts that the instruction texts of rating studies rely on does not capture the notion that psychologists working on abstract concepts are normally interested in, i.e., concepts that could reasonably be sensorimotor representations. For many concepts that pick out physical objects, this is not reasonable. In this paper, I propose a characterization of concrete and abstract concepts that avoids these two problems and that may be useful for future studies in psychology.

Represent an issue as open: Mandarin discourse particle ba

The Mandarin sentence final particle ba has been described as expressing uncertainty or soliciting agreement in declaratives ("weakening" an assertion, Han 1995, Li 2006 a.o.). However, ba-interrogatives appear to be "strengthening" a question to a demand: "you must answer this question," similar to the cornering effects associated with or not questions (Biezma 2009 a.o.). To account for this "weak" and "strong" contrast, some have postulated a lexical ambiguity: ba1 in declaratives and ba2 in interrogatives (Chao 1968, Zhu 1999). In this paper, I discuss new data showing that ba-declaratives are not always less forceful and ba-interrogatives are not always more forceful than their unmarked counterparts, which challenges current theories. I propose that, uniformly, the use of ba represents an issue as open. The "weak" and "strong" effects are results of ba interacting with the discourse context.