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Summary
Listeners create new word meanings through sense creation, supplementing ordinary sense selection. Experiments show that sense creation and selection happen concurrently, not sequentially after errors, improving comprehension.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Everyday conversation frequently requires listeners to derive novel meanings for existing words.
- This process, termed sense creation, supplements the standard sense selection mechanism.
Purpose of the Study:
- To contrast two models of the temporal dynamics of sense creation and sense selection.
- To determine whether sense creation follows sense selection failure or occurs concurrently.
Main Methods:
- Utilized preempting innovations (novel word uses like 'uniforms' for police officers) to differentiate between models.
- Designed experiments to measure comprehension processes in real-time.
Main Results:
- Experimental data supported the concurrent processing model over the error recovery model.
- Comprehension is better described by simultaneous sense selection and creation.
Conclusions:
- Sense creation and sense selection operate in parallel during language comprehension.
- The concurrent processing model offers a more accurate account of how listeners understand novel word senses in context.