Effect of Relative Frequency of Lexical Meanings on Accessing Lexical Ambiguities: Evidence from the Coordinator ‘and’

Abstract

Lexical ambiguity is a common phenomenon in English. Research on the resolution of lexical ambiguity began since 1970s, and has developed several theories on how comprehenders settle on a single meaning [12], [21], [28], [30]. Many studies have investigated the effects of relative meaning frequency and other factors on lexical ambiguity resolution [27], [29], [36], while the research subjects are mainly content words. Whether there are effects of relative meaning frequency on accessing coordinators keeps unclear. The present study takes the coordinator ‘and’ as the research subject to explore the effect of relative meaning frequency on lexical access via a lexical decision task and further investigate whether related meanings of ‘and’ lead to confusions in lexical access. In the experiment, 21 participants who are advanced Chinese EFL learners were requested to choose one of the two meanings for ‘and’ which connects two clauses in a complex sentence, and the accuracy and reaction time (RT) were collected. It was found that relative meaning frequency did influence accessing meanings of coordinator ‘and’—the higher the relative meaning frequency, the shorter the response time, and the relatedness between meanings led to confusions in lexical access. These results confirm the effect of relative meaning frequency on accessing meanings of coordinators and reveal the importance of distinguishing the related meanings.