Vu H, Kellas G, Paul S T
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045, USA.
Mem Cognit. 1998 Sep;26(5):979-1001. doi: 10.3758/bf03201178.
Results from a series of naming experiments demonstrated that major lexical categories of simple sentences can provide sources of constraint on the interpretation of ambiguous words (homonyms). Manipulation of verb (Experiment 1) or subject noun (Experiment 2) specificity produced contexts that were empirically rated as being strongly biased or ambiguous. Priming was demonstrated for target words related to both senses of a homonym following ambiguous sentences, but only contextually appropriate target words were primed following strongly biased dominant or subordinate sentences. Experiment 3 showed an increase in the magnitude of priming when multiple constraints on activation converged. Experiments 4 and 5 eliminated combinatorial intralexical priming as an alternative explanation. Instead, it was demonstrated that each constraint was influential only insofar as it contributed to the overall semantic representation of the sentence. When the multiple sources of constraint were retained but the sentence-level representation was changed (Experiment 4) or eliminated (Experiment 5), the results of Experiments 1, 2, and 3 and were not replicated. Experiment 6 examined the issue of homonym exposure duration by using an 80-msec stimulus onset asynchrony. The results replicated the previous experiments. The overall evidence indicates that a sentence context can be made strongly and immediately constraining by the inclusion of specific fillers for salient lexical categories. The results are discussed within a constraint-based, context-sensitive model of lexical ambiguity resolution.
一系列命名实验的结果表明，简单句子的主要词汇类别可以为歧义单词（同音异义词）的解释提供限制来源。对动词（实验1）或主语名词（实验2）特异性的操纵产生了经实证评估为强烈偏向或模糊的语境。在歧义句子之后，与同音异义词的两种意义相关的目标词都出现了启动效应，但在强烈偏向的主导或从属句子之后，只有上下文合适的目标词出现了启动效应。实验3表明，当激活的多种限制因素趋同的时候，启动效应的强度会增加。实验4和实验5排除了组合性词内启动效应作为另一种解释。相反，研究表明，每个限制因素只有在有助于句子的整体语义表征时才具有影响力。当保留多种限制因素来源，但改变句子层面的表征（实验4）或消除句子层面的表征（实验5）时，实验1、2和3的结果并未得到重复。实验6通过使用80毫秒的刺激开始异步时间来研究同音异义词暴露持续时间的问题。结果重复了先前的实验。总体证据表明，通过为显著的词汇类别纳入特定的填充词，可以使句子语境具有强烈且即时的限制性。研究结果在基于限制的、上下文敏感的词汇歧义消解模型中进行了讨论。
