When homonymous meanings are assumed to have separate representations in the human mind does this count for polysemous senses and does the processing advantage differ between homonymous and polysemous words? Since this is a very new perspective in psycholinguistics, not many results have been achieved by now. Thus, this study aims to go further and explain ‘the source of the processing advantage’ which could have been observed in previous lexical decision studies with ambiguous words.
In addition this study will focus on the diverse processing advantages for homonyms and polysemes and attempts to provide a model for the word representation of homonymous and polysemous words. Accordingly, the experiment is constituted as a lexical decision task. The used corpus was adopted from the study of Rodd et al. (2002: 263-264) which built the base for this study. This corpus was used because the present study only included 20 participants which thus only allows a predication to a limited extent. But by choosing this corpus parallels can be drawn between those two experiments and thereby a more general and meaningful statement can be provided.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Literature review
2.1 What is homonymy and polysemy?
2.2 Previous studies on lexical ambiguity
3 Methodology
3.1 Instruments
3.2 Informants
3.3 Data collection procedure
4 Results and discussion
4.1 Results evaluation
4.2 Comparison and critical discussion of the results
4.3 A model for the nature of the mental lexicon
5 Conclusion
Objectives and Research Themes
This study investigates how advanced learners of English store and process words with multiple meanings, specifically focusing on the distinction between homonymy and polysemy in the mental lexicon. The primary research question is whether polysemous words (having related senses) offer a processing advantage over homonymous words (having unrelated meanings).
- The differentiation between homonymy and polysemy in psycholinguistic processing.
- Evaluation of the "ambiguity advantage" effect in lexical decision tasks.
- Replication and comparison with the lexical ambiguity study by Rodd et al. (2002).
- Development of a model for word representation in the mental lexicon.
- Analysis of response times among advanced non-native English speakers.
Excerpt from the Book
1 Introduction
Decoding how people store and process words with multiple meanings has become a widely probed domain in psycholinguistics. Since earlier linguistic studies agreed on the point that ambiguous words produced a processing advantage none of them asked if this advantage differs between homonymy and polysemy. Are semantically unrelated words, which have (due to the same etymology) the same notation, stored and processed like words that have one meaning but many senses? The storage at least differs in a dictionary. In a dictionary the homonymous word bank, for example, provides two different entries - once as a bank which can mean river bank and again an entry for bank as an institute. Polysemy in contrast refers to relatedness in meaning and thereby only holds one entry. A sample would be the term tongue which once can mean the physical organ or tongue as the dialect one might speak. Thereby, two questions arise. When homonymous meanings are assumed to have separate representations in the human mind does this count for polysemous senses and does the processing advantage differ between homonymous and polysemous words?
Since this is a very new perspective in psycholinguistics, not many results have been achieved by now. Thus, this study aims to go further and explain ‘the source of the processing advantage’ which could have been observed in previous lexical decision studies with ambiguous words (Klepousniotou & Baum 2007: 8). In addition this study will focus on the diverse processing advantages for homonyms and polysemes and attempts to provide a model for the word representation of homonymous and polysemous words. Accordingly, the experiment is constituted as a lexical decision task. The used corpus was adopted from the study of Rodd et al. (2002: 263-264) which built the base for this study. This corpus was used because the present study only included 20 participants which thus only allows a predication to a limited extent. But by choosing this corpus parallels can be drawn between those two experiments and thereby a more general and meaningful statement can be provided.
Summary of Chapters
1 Introduction: This chapter introduces the psycholinguistic debate regarding the processing of ambiguous words and outlines the study's aim to distinguish between homonymy and polysemy.
2 Literature review: This section defines the key terms homonymy and polysemy and provides a critical overview of previous research on lexical ambiguity effects.
3 Methodology: This chapter describes the experimental design, the use of OpenSesame, the participant group, and the data collection process via a lexical decision task.
4 Results and discussion: This section presents the empirical data from the experiment and discusses the findings in relation to previous studies, specifically examining the ambiguity advantage.
5 Conclusion: This final chapter synthesizes the results, confirms the processing differences between polysemous and homonymous words, and suggests improvements for future research.
Keywords
Psycholinguistics, Mental Lexicon, Homonymy, Polysemy, Lexical Ambiguity, Ambiguity Advantage, Lexical Decision Task, Word Representation, Semantic Ambiguity, Processing Advantage, Cognitive Linguistics, Language Learning, OpenSesame, Word Recognition.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research?
The research focuses on the mental representation and processing of ambiguous words in the human mind, specifically distinguishing between the processing of homonyms and polysemes.
What are the central themes of the work?
The central themes include lexical ambiguity, the "ambiguity advantage" effect, the distinction between related and unrelated word senses, and how these factors influence word recognition times.
What is the primary goal or research question?
The study aims to determine whether the processing advantage observed for ambiguous words differs between homonymous words (unrelated meanings) and polysemous words (related senses).
Which scientific method is utilized?
The study utilizes a quantitative experimental approach, specifically a lexical decision task, where participants must quickly identify strings of letters as either actual words or non-words.
What is covered in the main body?
The main body includes a literature review of past studies, a detailed description of the experimental methodology, the presentation of response time data, and a critical discussion of the results compared to previous models.
Which keywords characterize the study?
Key terms include psycholinguistics, mental lexicon, lexical ambiguity, ambiguity advantage, homonymy, polysemy, and word recognition.
How does the "ambiguity advantage" specifically relate to polysemy?
The findings suggest that the ambiguity advantage is not a general result of having multiple meanings, but is specifically driven by words with multiple related senses (polysemes) rather than unrelated meanings (homonyms).
What limitations does the author mention regarding the study?
The author notes that the study involved a small sample size (20 participants), all of whom were non-native English speakers, and that the artificial nature of a lexical decision task may influence the performance and response times.
- Quote paper
- Melina Wiese (Author), 2015, The Representation of Homonymy and Polysemy in the Mental Lexicon, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/316221
