Applies concepts taken from the anthropological study of folk taxonomy to the semantic categorization of the senses in English, concluding that the 11 groups of contrast sets generally support hypotheses about folk taxonomies and present interesting data for cross-cultural comparisons. (five references) (CB)

Presents an analysis of the verb "get," which is portrayed as having different shades of meaning that stand in a noncomplex, semantically motivated relation to each other. The intended result is an explanation of the various uses of "get." (36 references) (JL)

Analysis of the differences in use and meaning of simple verb phrases ("to look") and nominalized phrases ("to have a look") points out that such constructions are not semantically empty, light, or weak, because these structures introduce meanings that are uniquely determined by the basic sense of the verb in question. (40 references) (CB)

Discusses latent semantic analysis (LSA), a statistical model for representing word usage in written language, and describes two experiments that were conducted with undergraduates to determine what aspect of knowledge, conceptual or factual, is being reflected in an LSA output from student essays. (Contains 21 references.)u (Author/LRW)

Offers an examination of the distributional range of causative verbs. Contrary to research claiming these verbs have highly circumscribed distributions, demonstrates that they readily appear in a wide variety of argument structure frames. The appearance of accusative verbs with omitted patient arguments is analyzed in detail and an account is…

The lexical semantic structures of change-of-state verbs are explored by linguistic theory, corpus analysis, and psycholinguistic experimentation. Data support the idea that these verbs can be divided into two classes, those for which change of state is internally caused and those for which it is externally caused. (Author/VWL)

Examines how babies exposed to two languages simultaneously acquire the meanings of words across their two languages. Particular focus was on whether babies know that they are acquiring different lexicons right from the start or whether early bilingual exposure causes them to be semantically confused. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the consistency of different newspapers in their choice of words when writing about the same news events based on a study of three Finnish newspapers. Concludes that expression inconsistency is a sign of a retrieval problem and that query expansion based on semantic relationships can significantly improve retrieval performance on free…

We explore the nature of the oscillatory dynamics in the EEG of subjects reading sentences that contain a semantic violation. More specifically, we examine whether increases in theta ([Approximately]3-7 Hz) and gamma (around 40 Hz) band power occur in response to sentences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically…

Many facts about aphasic and nonaphasic naming are explained by models that use spreading activation to map from the semantics of a word to its phonology. The implemented model of picture naming discussed here achieves this by coupling interactive feedback with two selection steps. The model's structure and default parameters were set up to match…

This study examined the effects that the acoustic-phonetic structure of a stimulus exerts on the processes by which lexical candidates compete for activation. An auditory lexical decision paradigm was used to investigate whether shortening the VOT of an initial voiceless stop consonant in a real word results in the activation of the…

The goal of this study was to find out how, in young children, conversations with an adult contribute to establishing a shared expression of beliefs through assertive speech acts. Children age 22 months were observed in a picture-book situation with their mother. On the basis of work on early semantic relations, 3 categories of assertives were…

Processing of discourse seems to be far from uniform with much evidence indicating that it can be quite shallow. The question is then what modulates depth of processing? A range of discourse devices exist that we believe may lead to more detailed processing of language input (Attention Capturers), thus serving as modulators of processing enabling…

In principle, comprehenders might always make immediate commitments to the interpretation of expressions (full commitment) or wait until such decisions are necessary (minimal commitment; Frazier & Rayner, 1990). One interesting case involves decisions about telicity: whether expressions refer to events that are determinate versus indeterminate…

Recognising the grammatical categories of words is a necessary skill for the acquisition of syntax and for on-line sentence processing. The syntactic and semantic context of the word contribute as cues for grammatical category assignment, but phonological cues, too, have been implicated as important sources of information. The value of…