epartment of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom EH8 9JZ.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Jul 1;24(7):1354-60. doi: 10.1177/0956797612472205. Epub 2013 May 30.
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.
在不同的语境中，单词的含义也不同，这一现象被称为多义性。人们谈论人和诗的线条，以及长距离和长时间。多义性允许有限的词汇量捕捉到各种各样的经验，同时突出共同点。但是，这是如何实现的呢？多义词的意义是语境驱动的核心意义的变体，还是每个意义都必须单独记忆？我们表明，参与者避免对用多义词命名的图片进行指代模糊描述的能力为这两种可能性提供了证据。当意义遵循规则模式（例如，动物和从动物身上获得的食物；嘈杂的鸡，美味的鸡）时，参与者在指代模糊的情况下避免使用模糊的标签（例如，两种鸡都在场），这一结果表明他们注意到了一个共同的意义。但是，当意义是特殊相关的（例如，一片玻璃，饮用玻璃）时，参与者经常产生模糊的标签，这一结果表明这些意义是分别存储的。我们讨论了这对单词含义和概念之间关系的影响。
