The Truth About Chickens and Bats
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Words mean different things in different contexts, a phenomenon called polysemy. People talk about lines of both people and poetry, and about both long distances and long times. Polysemy lets a limited vocabulary capture a great variety of experiences, while highlighting commonalities. But how is this achieved? Are polysemous senses contextually driven modifications of core meanings, or must each sense be memorized separately? We show that participants' ability to avoid referentially ambiguous descriptions of pictures named by polysemous words provides evidence for both possibilities. When senses followed a regular pattern (e.g., animals and the foodstuffs derived from them; noisy chicken, tasty chicken), participants avoided using ambiguous labels in referentially ambiguous situations (e.g., both types of chicken were present), a result indicating that they noticed a common meaning. But when senses were idiosyncratically related (e.g., sheet of glass, drinking glass), participants frequently produced ambiguous labels, a result indicating that the meanings were separately stored. We discuss implications for the relationship between word meanings and concepts.
Source: Psychological Science
Authors: Hugh Rabagliati, Jesse Snedeker
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2153501447