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.

Working memory and lexical ambiguity resolution in Cantonese Chinese

The present study examined how working memory functions in the underlying mechanism of the lexical disambiguation process (in activation approach or in inhibition approach). We recruited sixty native Cantonese listeners to participate in two experimental tasks: (a) a Cantonese-version reading span task to measure their working memory (WM) capacity and (b) a standard cross-modal priming task to measure the lexical disambiguation time. The results revealed that (1) the underlying mechanism of the disambiguation process seemed favorable for an inhibition approach and (2) the frequency of the individual meanings of the ambiguous words and the numbers of their meanings might interact with the WM capacity during lexical access, particularly for the low-WM span group.

Лексическая неоднозначность в экспериментальных исследованиях: метаанализ

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.

I Scream for Ice Cream: Resolving Lexical Ambiguity with Sub-phonemic Information

This study uses a response mouse-tracking paradigm to examine the role of sub-phonemic information in online lexical ambiguity resolution of continuous speech. We examine listeners’ sensitivity to the sub-phonemic information that is specific to the ambiguous internal open juncture /s/-stop sequences in American English (e.g., “ place kin” vs. “ play skin”), that is, voice onset time (VOT) indicating different degrees of aspiration (e.g., long VOT for “ k in” vs. short VOT for “ s k in”) in connected speech contexts. A cross-splicing method was used to create two-word sequences (e.g., “ place kin” or “ play skin”) with matching VOTs (long for “ k in”; short for “ s k in”) or mismatching VOTs ( short for “ k in”; long for “ s k in”). Participants ( n = 20) heard the two-word sequences, while looking at computer displays with the second word in the left/right corner (“ KIN” and “ SKIN”). Then, listeners’ click responses and mouse movement trajectories were recorded. Click responses show significant effects of VOT manipulation, while mouse trajectories do not. Our results show that stop-release information, whether temporal or spectral, can (mis)guide listeners’ interpretation of the possible location of a word boundary between /s/ and a following stop, even when other aspects in the acoustic signal (e.g., duration of /s/) point to the alternative segmentation. Taken together, our results suggest that segmentation and lexical access are highly attuned to bottom-up phonetic information; our results have implications for a model of spoken language recognition with position-specific representations available at the prelexical level and also allude to the possibility that detailed phonetic information may be stored in the listeners’ lexicons.