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Eponymous verb phrases and ambiguity resolution.

D N Rapp¹, R J Gerrig

¹Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Stony Brook 11794-2500, USA. drapp@psych1.psy.sunysb.edu

Memory & Cognition

|September 10, 1999

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Understanding phrases like "do a John Travolta" requires creating new meanings, not just selecting them. Memory retrieval for these unique phrases parallels how we handle regular word ambiguities.

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Psycholinguistics
Lexical Semantics

Background:

Eponymous verb phrases (e.g., "do a John Travolta") present unique comprehension challenges.
Understanding these phrases involves novel sense creation, distinct from simple sense selection from a mental lexicon.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether memory retrieval processes for eponymous verb phrases mirror those for ordinary lexical ambiguities.
To test the hypothesis that creating new senses relies on memory retrieval similar to resolving ambiguous words.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted to examine the comprehension of eponymous verb phrases.
Experiment 1 used paraphrase judgment times to assess the accessibility of dominant vs. subordinate interpretations in biased contexts.

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Experiment 2 introduced a delay to observe the effect on the accessibility of phrase meanings.

Main Results:

Dominant interpretations of eponymous verb phrases remained accessible even when context biased towards subordinate meanings (Experiment 1).
This privilege of dominant meanings diminished with a delay before judgment (Experiment 2).

Conclusions:

The findings suggest that understanding eponymous verb phrases involves active memory retrieval and sense creation.
These processes share similarities with, yet may also differ from, mechanisms underlying the resolution of lexical ambiguity.