{"title":"Evidence for automatic accessing of constructional meaning: Jabberwocky sentences prime associated verbs","authors":"Matt A. Johnson, A. Goldberg","doi":"10.1080/01690965.2012.717632","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A central question within psycholinguistics is where sentences get their meaning. While it has been shown that phrasal constructions are readily associated with specific meanings, it remains unclear whether this meaning is accessed automatically, in the sense of being accessed quickly, and without reflection or explicit instruction. In this study, participants performed a lexical decision task on individual target words which were preceded by abstract skeletal constructions devoid of any meaningful open-class items. For example, an instance of a ditransitive prime was, He daxed her the norp. Three target words corresponded to the hypothesised meaning of each construction; that is, semantically congruent words for the English ditransitive were give, handed, and transferred. We found significant priming effects for congruent over incongruent target words, both for associated targets (which occur regularly within the construction: e.g., give and handed), and to a lesser extent, for target words that are semantically related to the construction but which rarely occur in the construction (e.g., transferred for the ditransitive).","PeriodicalId":87410,"journal":{"name":"Language and cognitive processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01690965.2012.717632","citationCount":"54","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language and cognitive processes","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2012.717632","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 54
Abstract
A central question within psycholinguistics is where sentences get their meaning. While it has been shown that phrasal constructions are readily associated with specific meanings, it remains unclear whether this meaning is accessed automatically, in the sense of being accessed quickly, and without reflection or explicit instruction. In this study, participants performed a lexical decision task on individual target words which were preceded by abstract skeletal constructions devoid of any meaningful open-class items. For example, an instance of a ditransitive prime was, He daxed her the norp. Three target words corresponded to the hypothesised meaning of each construction; that is, semantically congruent words for the English ditransitive were give, handed, and transferred. We found significant priming effects for congruent over incongruent target words, both for associated targets (which occur regularly within the construction: e.g., give and handed), and to a lesser extent, for target words that are semantically related to the construction but which rarely occur in the construction (e.g., transferred for the ditransitive).
心理语言学的一个核心问题是句子的意义从何而来。虽然已经证明短语结构很容易与特定的含义联系起来,但目前还不清楚这个含义是否是自动获取的,即在快速获取的意义上,没有经过反思或明确的指示。在这项研究中,参与者对单个目标词进行词汇决策任务,这些词之前是抽象的骨架结构,没有任何有意义的开放类项目。例如,一个及物质数的例子是,He daxed her the norp。三个目标词对应每个构式的假设意义;也就是说,语义上一致的英语异物词被给予、传递和转移。我们发现,对于一致的目标词,启动效应显著高于不一致的目标词,无论是对相关目标词(在结构中经常出现,例如,give和hand),还是在较小程度上,对语义上与结构相关但很少出现在结构中的目标词(例如,为异及物而转移)。