LEXICAL INTERFACE 2
OCT 26, 2015 – DAY 25
Brain & Language
LING 4110-4890-5110-7960
NSCI 4110-4891-6110
Fall 2015
10/26/15
Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
Course organization
• http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/BrLg/
• Fun with https://www.facebook.com/BrLg15/
• I have finished grading & will post grades this
afternoon/tomorrow.
• http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/BrLg/t17LexicalInterface.html
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THE LEXICAL INTERFACE
The quiz was the review.
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THE LEXICAL INTERFACE 2
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The lexical interface
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Do you see any difference between (a) and (b)?
Which sensory
modality are these
most dependent on?
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Areas ~ hubs ~ effects
= sensorimotor semantics
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Dual pathways in vision
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LEXICAL SEMANTICS 1
Ingram: III. Lexical semantics, §10.
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Some semantic relations
• synonymy
• words share the same meaning: violin ~ fiddle
• antonymy
• words have opposite meanings: long ~ short
• hypernymy
• one word ‘contains’ the meaning of another in a taxonomy: animal ~ horse
• hyponymy
• one word is ‘contained’ in the meaning of another in a taxonomy: horse ~
animal
• holonymy
• one word is a whole for the meaning of another: hand ~ finger
• meronymy
• one word is a part for the meaning of another: finger ~ hand
• metonymy
• a part of a concept stands for the whole concept: Hollywood ~ American movie
industry
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Polysemy
Write down all the meanings of “play” that you can think of.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Activity for amusement only, especially among the young.
The conduct, or course of a game.
An individual's performance in a sport or game.
An action carried out when it is one's turn to play.
A literary composition, intended to be represented by actors
impersonating the characters and speaking the dialogue.
A theatrical performance featuring actors.
A major move by a business.
The extent to which a part of a mechanism can move freely.
A geological formation that contains an accumulation or
prospect of hydrocarbons or other resources.
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Semantic anomalies
anomaly
1. a club for married
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
bachelors
a vase of whiskey
colorless green ideas
your heart’s dissent
freeze structure
bang my hammer with a
finger
intended expression
1. ?
2. a flask of whiskey
3. ?
4. your heart’s content
5. phrase structure
6. bang my finger with a
hammer
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Write down every word that you associate with this object
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Semantic networks
Ingram goes into great detail
on Quillian’s Teachable
Language Comprehender
(TLC); I could not find an
image, but this illustrates the
idea just as well.
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The linkages in such a network are …
• semantic …
• the relationships of meaning mentioned above, such as part-whole;
• these are necessary, in the sense that a hand is by definition made
up of fingers.
• or associative …
• established by the fact that certain words are often used together,
such as pig and farm;
• these are ‘accidental’, in the sense that there is nothing in the
meaning of pig that requires them to be associated with farms;
• they are often defined in a free association test, by giving a subject
the prime word and asking her to say the first word that comes
mind;
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Caveat
• I grant that the distinction between semantic and
associative relationships can be difficult to pin down.
• Note that psychologists would call semantic networks ‘semantic
memory’,
• while linguists would say that most of these networks contain realworld knowledge, which is different from linguistic semantics.
• So let us look at an experiment that tries to tease these
two domains apart.
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‘To prime the pump’
• ‘The facilitatory effect
that presentation of an
item can have on the
response to a
subsequent item’
• usually measured in
terms of reaction time
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
Semantic + associative vs. non-associative prime-probe relations
Table 10.4, Moss et al. (1995)
Semantic
relation
Associated
Nonassociated
Category coordination
[taxonomy]
Function
Natural
Artifact
Instrumental
Scripted
cat – dog
boat – ship
bow – arrow
theater – play
brother – sister
coat – hat
umbrella – rain
beach – sand
aunt – nephew
airplane – train
knife – bread
party – music
pig – horse
blouse – dress
string – parcel
zoo – penguin
Increased priming with respect to control condition
in which there is no relationship between prime and probe:
unrelated (control) < semantic + non-associative < semantic + associative
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Final project
• Improve a Wikipedia article about any of the topics
mentioned in class or any other topic broadly related to
neurolinguistics.
• Write a short essay explaining what you did and why
you did it.
• Print the article before you improve it, highlighting any
subtractions.
• Print the article after you improve it, highlighting your
additions.
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NEXT TIME
Q6
More on the lexical interface: word semantics
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