A Cognitive Approach to English Vague ambiguous Sentences from the Perspective of Semantic Activation

Abstract

The view of semantic activation provides a fair cognitive basis for English vague ambiguous sentences. Integrating the access-and-activation model with a chain of reference point relationships, this paper constructs an access and spreading activation network model of reference point relationships to probe into the cognitive interpretation of vague ambiguous sentences. Results indicate that the double-decoding conceptualization process involves the reference point’s activating and spreading to the target. Vague ambiguity takes place at the levels of lexeme, lemma and conceptual level. The research may shed new light on cognitive linguistics, language education and computer processing of natural language.