Christina L. Gagné

Influence of Thematic Relations on the Comprehension of Modifier–noun Combinations

To comprehend a nonpredicating combination involving a modifier (e.g., mountain) and a head noun (e.g., stream), one must specify a thematic relation (e.g., a stream in the mountains) that links the 2 constituent concepts. The authors investigated the influence of thematic relations on the comprehension of nonpredicating combinations. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated that people use information about what relations the constituents typically instantiate during conceptual combination. More specifically, a combination is easier to interpret when it uses a frequent relation of the modifier than when it uses a less frequent relation. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that these results are not an artifact of the individual component words. The authors propose a model of conceptual combination called the competition among relations in nominals (CARIN) model in which ease of comprehension depends both on the frequency of the to-be-selected relation and on the frequency of the alternatives.

Lexical and relational influences on the processing of novel compounds.

To interpret a novel compound (e.g., chocolate twig), one must access the concepts denoted by the words and select a relation that links them together. To examine the role of lexical and relation information on conceptual combination, target combinations were preceded by one of three prime combinations. In Experiment 1, the prime used a semantically similar head noun and either the same or different relation. The third prime was semantically unrelated to the target. Experiment 2 was identical, except the modifier was the semantically related constituent. Although semantic priming was observed in both experiments, relation priming was obtained only when the modifier was similar.

Priming relations in ambiguous noun-noun combinations

We conducted two experiments to examine whether the interpretation of an ambiguous noun phrase is influenced by exposure to a similar combination. In Experiment 1, we found that it was easier to verify a definition for a combination (e.g.,adolescent doctor, a doctor for adolescents) when the prime used the same relation as the target (e.g.,adolescent magazine, a magazine for adolescents;animal doctor, a doctor for animals) than when the prime used a different relation (e.g.,country doctor; adolescent experience). In Experiment 2, we found that the interpretation generated for an ambiguous combination was affected by prior exposure to sentences containing a combination with the same modifier or head noun as the target combination. The data are inconsistent with key predictions of schema-based theories of conceptual combination. Although the results do not contradict key assumptions of relationbased theories, modifications to these theories are required to account for these data.

Effect of Relation Availability on the Interpretation and Access of Familiar Noun-Noun Compounds.

Two experiments investigate whether relations that link the constituents of compounds during compound formation (e.g., teapot is formed by combining tea and pot using the relation head noun FOR modifier) also influence the processing of familiar compounds. Although there is evidence for the use of such relations in forming compounds, whether such relations affect the processing of familiar compounds is unknown. The data show clear effects of repetition and relational priming for written words on both a sense-nonsense task and a lexical decision task. These results indicate that the relation linking the constituents of familiar compounds is important to their access and use.

Influence of discourse context on feature availability in conceptual combination

Four experiments investigated the comprehension of combined concepts (e.g., peeled apple) in discourse by having people verify features that were true of the phrase (e.g., white) or true of noun (e.g., round). Phrase features were verified more accurately than noun features when the combinations were presented in a neutral context (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2 and 3, the discourse context was constructed to alter the given‐new structure of the combined concept. In both cases, the discourse context did not alter the tendency for phrase features to be easier to verify than noun features. In Experiment 4, we found that it is possible to alter the relative difficulty of verifying noun and phrase features if the discourse context emphasizes the particular feature being verified. Taken together, these results suggest that, during conceptual combination, features that are viewed as nonredundant information are available prior to other features. Features may be regarded as nonredundant if they serve to disting...

Relation availability was not confounded with familiarity or plausibility in Gagné and Shoben (1997): Comment on Wisniewski and Murphy (2005)

C. L. Gagné and E. Shoben (1997) proposed that the conceptual system contains information about how concepts are used to modify other concepts and that this relational information influences the ease with which concepts combine. Recently, E. J. Wisniewski and G. L. Murphy suggested that C. L. Gagné and E. Shobens measure of relation availability was confounded with familiarity and plausibility and that the participants could simply retrieve the stored meanings of the phrases because the phrases were not novel. In this article, the authors demonstrate that E. J. Wisniewski and G. L. Murphys plausibility and familiarity judgments are dependent variables that (a) are themselves responsive to changes in relation availability, (b) modifier relation availability predicts response time even when the influence of phrase familiarity and plausibility is controlled, and (c) the materials consisted of mainly novel phrases.

Sentential Context and the Interpretation of Familiar Open-Compounds and Novel Modifier-Noun Phrases.

Two experiments investigated the influence of sentential context on the relative ease of deriving a particular meaning for novel and familiar compounds. Experiment 1 determined which of two possible meanings was preferred for a set of novel phrases. Experiment 2 used both novel (e.g., brain sponge) and familiar compounds (e.g., bug spray). The compounds appeared in a sentential context that supported either the dominant or subdominant meaning. Next, participants saw either the dominant or subdominant definition and indicated whether it was plausible. When the definition was consistent with the preceding sentence, the participants were more likely to consider the definition plausible regardless of whether the compound was novel or familiar, although this difference was more pronounced for novel phrases than for familiar phrases. In terms of response times, the effect of sentential context also depended on the degree of dominance. The data suggest that the interpretation of compounds is affected by at least two sources of information: sentential context and the relative dominance of the preferred meaning.

Conceptual Composition: The Role of Relational Competition in the Comprehension of Modifier-Noun Phrases and Noun–Noun Compounds

Abstract Compositionality and productivity, which are the abilities to combining existing concepts and words to create new concepts and phrases, words, and sentences, are hallmarks of the human conceptual and language systems. Combined concepts are formed within the conceptual system and can be expressed via modifier-noun phrases (e.g. purple beans ) and compound words (e.g. snowball ), which are the simplest forms of productivity. Modifier-noun phrases and compound words are often paraphrased using a relation to connect the constituents (e.g. beans that are purple, ball made of snow ). The phrase or compound does not explicitly contain the underlying relation, but the existence of the relation can be shown by manipulating the availability of the relation and observing the effect on the interpretation of the phrase or compound. This chapter describes how novel modifier-noun phrases and established compounds are interpreted. We present a theoretical account of relational interpretation of combined concepts and present the empirical evidence for the use of relational structures. We then present the empirical evidence supporting our theoretical account’s specific predictions about how relational interpretations are selected and evaluated and how the relational interpretation is elaborated to create a fully specified new concept.

Relation priming in established compounds: facilitation?

Gagné and Spalding (Brain and Language, 90, 478–486, 2004, Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 20–35, 2009) have shown that the difficulty of interpreting an established compound (e.g., snowball) can be influenced by recent exposure to a compound with the same modifier and that this influence depends on the relation linking the constituents of the compound. For example, snowball (a ball made of snow) was processed more quickly following snowfort (a fort made of snow; same relation) than following snowshovel (a shovel for snow; different relation). In three experiments, we investigated the basis of this relation-priming effect. The results indicated that the relation-priming effect in established compounds is due to slower processing in the different-relation condition rather than to faster processing in the same-relation condition. These results pose a challenge for most models of compound-word processing.

Thematic Role Focusing by Participle Inflections: Evidence From Conceptual Combination

The authors examined how people integrate knowledge of agents and patients of events with the temporal and causal properties of present and past participles to constrain interpretation of isolated participle-noun phrases like arresting cop and arrested crook. Good-agent head nouns were more easily combined with present participles (e.g., arresting cop) than with past participles (e.g., arrested cop), and the reverse was true for good patients. Furthermore, present-participle good-patient phrases (e.g., serving customer) were often interpreted as verb phrases. This research provides further evidence of the interaction between morphosyntactic cues and world knowledge of events in language comprehension.