Mental LexiconPub Date : 2023-03-28DOI: 10.1075/ml.22009.she
Shen Tian, H. Baayen
{"title":"Productivity and semantic transparency","authors":"Shen Tian, H. Baayen","doi":"10.1075/ml.22009.she","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.22009.she","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000We used word embeddings to study the relation between productivity and semantic transparency. We compiled a dataset with around 2700 two-syllable compounds that shared position-specific constituents (henceforth pivots) and some 1100 suffixed words. For each pivot and suffix, we calculated measures of productivity as well as measures of semantic transparency. For compounds, productivity (P) was negatively correlated with the number of types (V) and with the semantic similarity between non-pivot constituents and their compounds. Conversely, the greater semantic similarity of the pivot with either the compound or the non-pivot constituent predicted higher degrees of productivity. Visualization with t-SNE revealed clustering of suffixed words’ embeddings, but no by-pivot clustering for compounds, except for a minority of pivots whose regions in semantic space did not contain intruding unrelated compounds. A subset of these pivots was found to realize a fixed shift in semantic space from the base word to the corresponding compound, a property that also emerged for several suffixes. For these pivots, no correlation between P and V was present. Thus, Mandarin compounds appear to realize, at one extreme, motivated but unsystematic concept formation (where other pivots could just as well have been used), and at the other extreme, systematic suffix-like semantics.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46147710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2023-03-23DOI: 10.1075/ml.22012.stu
I. Stupak, R. Baayen
{"title":"An inquiry into the semantic transparency and productivity of German particle verbs and derivational affixation","authors":"I. Stupak, R. Baayen","doi":"10.1075/ml.22012.stu","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.22012.stu","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This study addresses the relation between morphological productivity and semantic transparency. Using distributional semantics, we compare German word formation using particles with derivational word formation. We observed that derivational suffixes, but not particles, tend to make strong independent semantic contributions to their carrier words. In two-dimensional t-SNE maps, complex words show clustering by affix, but not by particle. Furthermore, the semantic vectors of suffixed words are predictable from their base words with higher accuracy than is possible for particle verbs. For particle verbs, but not affixed verbs, semantic similarity within the set of complex words correlated negatively with the number of types. Furthermore, only for particle verbs, a greater number of observed types predicted a reduced probability of observing unseen types. We propose that particle verbs primarily serve the onomasiological function of labeling, resulting in relatively idiosyncratic semantic vectors. By contrast, words sharing derivational affixes form distinct clusters in semantic space while maintaining strong and consistent semantic relations with their base words. This enables these words to serve not only as labels, but also allows them to be used with an anaphoric function in discourse.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47783362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1075/ml.22008.nik
A. Nikolaev, Yu-Ying Chuang, R. Baayen
{"title":"A generating model for Finnish nominal inflection using distributional semantics","authors":"A. Nikolaev, Yu-Ying Chuang, R. Baayen","doi":"10.1075/ml.22008.nik","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.22008.nik","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Finnish nouns are characterized by rich inflectional variation, with obligatory marking of case and number, with\u0000 optional possessive suffixes and with the possibility of further cliticization. We present a model for the conceptualization of\u0000 Finnish inflected nouns, using pre-compiled fasttext embeddings (300-dimensional semantic vectors that approximate words’\u0000 meanings). Instead of deriving the semantic vector of an inflected word from another word in its paradigm, we propose that an\u0000 inflected word is conceptualized by means of summation of latent vectors representing the meanings of its lexeme and its\u0000 inflectional features. We tested this model on the 2,000 most frequent Finnish nouns and their inflected word forms from a corpus\u0000 of Finnish (84 million tokens). Visualization of the semantic space of Finnish using t-SNE clarified that a ‘main effects’\u0000 additive model does not do justice to the semantics of inflection. In Finnish, how number is realized turns out to vary\u0000 substantially with case. Further interactions emerged with the possessive suffixes and the clitics. By taking these interactions\u0000 into account, the accuracy of our model, evaluated with the fasttext embeddings as gold standard, improved from 76% to 89%.\u0000 Analyses of the errors made by the model clarified that 7.5% of errors are due to overabundance (and hence not true errors), and\u0000 that 16.5% of the errors involved exchanges of semantically highly similar stems (lexemes). Our results indicate, first, that the\u0000 semantics of Finnish noun inflection are more intricate than assumed thus far, and second, that these intricacies can be captured\u0000 with surprisingly high accuracy by a simple generating model based on imputed semantic vectors for lexemes, inflectional features,\u0000 and interactions of inflectional features.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46412131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2023-02-23DOI: 10.1075/ml.20025.lai
Yao-Ying Lai, D. Braze, M. Piñango
{"title":"The time-course of contextual modulation for underspecified meaning","authors":"Yao-Ying Lai, D. Braze, M. Piñango","doi":"10.1075/ml.20025.lai","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.20025.lai","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Sentences like (1) “The singer began the album” are ambiguous between an agentive reading (The\u0000 singer began recording/playing/etc. the album) and a constitutive reading (The singer’s song was the first track). The ambiguity\u0000 is rooted in the meaning specification of the aspectual-verb class, which demands its complement be construed as a structured\u0000 individual along a dimension (e.g., spatial, informational, eventive). In (1), the complement can be construed as a set of\u0000 eventualities (eventive) or musical content (informational). Processing aspectual-verb sentences is shown to involve (a)\u0000 exhaustive lexical-function retrieval and (b) construal of multiple dimension-specific structured individuals, leading to multiple\u0000 compositions with agentive and constitutive readings. The ultimate interpretation depends on the biased dimensions in context. Our\u0000 eye-tracking study comparing sentences in different contexts (agentive vs. constitutive-biasing) shows not only the aspectual-verb\u0000 composition effect, previously reported for the agentive readings, but also a comparable processing profile for the constitutive\u0000 readings, a novel finding supporting the unified linguistic analysis and processing implementation of the two readings. Regardless\u0000 of reading, the composition effect is observable even after the complement has been retrieved, indicating that the fundamental\u0000 lexico-semantic compositional processes must take place before context can serve as a constraining force.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46782763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2023-01-03DOI: 10.1075/ml.21013.fer
Laura Fernández-Arroyo, Nuria Sagarra, K. Fernandez
{"title":"Differential effects of language proficiency and use on L2 lexical prediction","authors":"Laura Fernández-Arroyo, Nuria Sagarra, K. Fernandez","doi":"10.1075/ml.21013.fer","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.21013.fer","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Language experience is essential for SLA. Yet, studies comparing the role of L2 proficiency and L2 use on L2 processing are scant, and there are no studies examining how these variables modulate learners’ ability to generalize grammatical associations to new instances. This study investigates whether L2 proficiency and L2 use affect L2 stress-tense suffix associations (a stressed syllable cuing a present suffix, and an unstressed syllable cuing a preterit suffix) using eye-tracking. Spanish monolinguals and English learners of Spanish varying in L2 proficiency and L2 use saw two verbs (e.g., firma-firmó ‘(s)he signs/signed’), heard a sentence containing one of the verbs, and chose the verb they had heard. Both groups looked at target verbs above chance before hearing the suffix, but the monolinguals did so more accurately and earlier than the learners. The learners recognized past verbs faster than present verbs, were faster with higher than lower L2 proficiency, and later with higher than lower L2 use. Finally, higher L2 proficiency yielded earlier morphological activation but higher L2 use produced later morphological activation, indicating that L2 proficiency and L2 use affect L2 word processing differently. We discuss the contribution of these findings to language acquisition and processing models, as well as models of general cognition.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45194108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2022-12-08DOI: 10.1075/ml.22002.joh
P. John, J. Frasnelli
{"title":"On the lexical source of variable L2 phoneme production","authors":"P. John, J. Frasnelli","doi":"10.1075/ml.22002.joh","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.22002.joh","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The current study investigates two lexical explanations for variation in L2 production: approximate (‘fuzzy’) representations vs dual URs. The focus is on Quebec francophone (QF) production of English /θ ð/ and /h/, which a reading-aloud task shows to be highly variable. Variation is problematic for the assumption that, due to perceptual illusions, URs are inaccurate. How is accurate output generated from inaccurate URs? Approximate representations employ diacritics rather than distinctive features. Arguably, these representations do not consistently generate accurate output. Under dual URs, lexical entries contain both inaccurate URs due to initial misperceptions and accurate URs generated when learners become capable of perceiving L2 phonemes. These URs compete for selection, leading to variation. Perception findings from oddball and semantic incongruity tasks provide conflicting support for the explanations: perception is variable, as predicted under approximate representations; but typical L2→L1 substitutions are harder to detect than atypical L1→L2 substitutions, an asymmetry expected under dual URs. To resolve the contradiction, we reinterpret the latter findings as revealing an implicit strategy of corrective adjustment acquired through experience with L2 errors. While we conclude that the L2 lexicon employs approximate representations, an enduring enigma concerns the considerably higher rates of hypercorrect [h] than [θ ð].","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47260953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2022-11-29DOI: 10.1075/ml.21016.tho
A. Thompson, May Pik Yu Chan, Ping Hei Yeung, Youngah Do
{"title":"Structural markedness and depiction","authors":"A. Thompson, May Pik Yu Chan, Ping Hei Yeung, Youngah Do","doi":"10.1075/ml.21016.tho","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.21016.tho","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery and are hypothesized to be structurally marked, i.e., exhibiting unique structural properties. In this paper, “marked” is broadly used to mean phonologically marked (Dingemanse, 2021: Akita and Dingemanse, 2019). Using Cantonese ideophones as our case study, this paper measures sequential predictability within ideophones and non-ideophones, as a way to test their relative degree of structural markedness. We created a database of non-ideophones and ideophones from the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus (HKCC) (Luke and Wong, 2015) and Mok (2001) and calculated the sequential predictability of each phoneme in various phonological contexts. The results indicate that Cantonese ideophones exhibit lower degrees of sequential predictability than non-ideophones, lending empirical support to the structural markedness of ideophones. We argue that non-ideophones exhibit a higher degree of sequential predictability because they follow the phonotactic regularities of Cantonese, whereas ideophones, to some degree, flout these regulations in favor of sequences of sounds that might better depict a given referent or percept.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44097415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1075/ml.21010.cru
Karen Pérez Cruz, Chelsa Patel, Jazlynn Steinbach, Mohamed Barre, Holly Kibbins, Dixie Wong, Alexander Taikh, Christina L. Gagné, T. Spalding
{"title":"Is meaning construction attempted during the processing of pseudo-compounds?","authors":"Karen Pérez Cruz, Chelsa Patel, Jazlynn Steinbach, Mohamed Barre, Holly Kibbins, Dixie Wong, Alexander Taikh, Christina L. Gagné, T. Spalding","doi":"10.1075/ml.21010.cru","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.21010.cru","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Psycholinguists have yet to reach a consensus on what role constituent morphemes play in the processing of\u0000 compound words, although some recent work suggests that morphemes are activated obligatorily during processing. In the current\u0000 study, we investigate whether people use morphemes to attempt meaning construction even for pseudo-compounds which are words that\u0000 appear to have a compound structure, but in fact do not (e.g., carpet is not car + pet). We\u0000 obtained relational entropies (a measure of potential relational competition) for a set of pseudo-compound words based on\u0000 responses from a possible relations task. The relational entropy values as well as frequency of the prime (e.g.,\u0000 carpet) and target (e.g., car) were then used to predict the processing of the pseudo-first\u0000 constituents after exposure to the pseudo-compound masked primes. We observed a significant three-way interaction between entropy,\u0000 target frequency, and prime frequency. Our results suggest that meaning construction is attempted for pseudo-compound words.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41822393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2022-10-06DOI: 10.1075/ml.22001.ari
Natalia Arias-Trejo, G. Bel-Enguix, J. B. Barrón-Martínez, A. Minto-García, Ó. Arias-Carrión, Martha M. González-González
{"title":"Word association norms in Mexican older adults","authors":"Natalia Arias-Trejo, G. Bel-Enguix, J. B. Barrón-Martínez, A. Minto-García, Ó. Arias-Carrión, Martha M. González-González","doi":"10.1075/ml.22001.ari","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.22001.ari","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Aging involves a variety of cognitive and language changes. Word association norms (WANs), which describe the\u0000 first word people say or write after reading or hearing a stimulus word, reflect the organization of semantic knowledge. The aim\u0000 of this study was to create a WAN corpus for Mexican older adults, with 114 participants responding to 117 nouns. The results of\u0000 eight measures of word-word relationships showed that participants generated an average of 38.14 different response words for each\u0000 stimulus word. Of these responses, 41.88% were of high associative strength and 20.70% were idiosyncratic, demonstrating the\u0000 uniqueness of responses of older adults. In addition, we compared their responses to a corpus for younger adults (Barrón-Martínez & Arias-Trejo, 2014). A qualitative analysis categorizing the\u0000 responses into syntagmatic and paradigmatic types showed that the older group tended to respond with words from a different\u0000 grammatical class. Responses of the younger adults were also more cohesive and less varied than those of the older group. This\u0000 corpus for older adults is an essential resource for evaluating age-related changes in semantic memory, and it provides a point of\u0000 comparison for responses from people with neurodegenerative diseases.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47381541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental LexiconPub Date : 2022-10-04DOI: 10.22146/lexicon.v9i2.65914
Luthfia Rozanatunnisa, Tofan Dwi Hardjanto
{"title":"A Corpus-Based Study of Writer Identities in Biology Research Articles: Clusivity and Authorial Self","authors":"Luthfia Rozanatunnisa, Tofan Dwi Hardjanto","doi":"10.22146/lexicon.v9i2.65914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v9i2.65914","url":null,"abstract":"An academic writing, especially a research article, is commonly, but vaguely considered that it has to be impersonal. In other words, there is a common discouragement to express writer identities in academic writings. Yet, it is recently discovered that personal attribution has such a significant role to display the interaction both between the authors and the readers and the authors and other researchers in the field. In this paper, I investigate the linguistic forms used to indicate writer identity in a number of selected research articles, and how they are used in terms of their clusivity as well as authorial self these linguistic forms construct. The data were taken from two reputable international journals: 10 research articles taken from Genome Biology, and the other 10 were taken from Molecular Systems Biology. These data were analyzed with the help of Wordsmith 5.0 (Scott 2008), an offline application which allows us to discover the occurrences of authorial references used in research articles and make concordances. A qualitative analysis was also conducted to examine the clusivity and the authorial self each linguistic form expresses. Classification on authorial selves was based on a taxonomy proposed by Tang & John (1999). The findings of this research are then aimed at indicating a tendency of writers in attributing themselves in academic writing, especially in biology research articles, where authors show more authority in their writing with the use of frequent authorial references expressing themselves as the recounters of the research process.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73717017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}