Norms as a tool for the study of homography

Abstract

Four continuous word associations to each of 107 homographs were obtained from 50 male and 50 female undergraduates. Included in the word sample were 12 nonhomophonic homographs (heterophones). The data were analyzed to derive two indexes. A dominance score was defined on the basis of the frequency that a particular meaning was associated to each homograph. A stability score was a measure of the likelihood that the continuous associations were consistent with the first associate. Norms were provided for these measures. Comparison of heterophones to homophones indicates that the former are significantly more stable.A large proportion of English words have principal meanings ranging in distinctiveness from shades of meaning that add precision to communication to examples of nonoverlap of the attributes of a single homographic entry with the sole exception of the orthographic representation (e.g., "bass," which denotes specific meanings, i.e., as a fish and in relation to music, and is pronounced as hass or bass to correspond to the meaning). The existence of polysemy has provided a fertile ground for speculation and research for students of language and the structure and utilization of knowledge.In our review of possible factors that influence performance in situations involving homographs, we find two main factors of interest. One of these has been attended to in a number of studies, this being the variable of associative dominance. Such a measure is defined on the basis of word association data as the proportion of subjects who produce first associations related to a particular meaning of a homograph. A second variable of interest is the stability of the association. One study in the literature has had that variable as its principal focus. Geis and Winograd (1974) define stability on the basis of a repeated testing of the homograph in separate sessions at different times. In the present study, we adopt the procedure of Bilodeau and Howell (l965), asking for continued associations, and define a measure, "stability," on the basis of the sequential probability that associations to a particular homograph differ in their meaning.The present study also includes a particular class of homographs, those whose meanings have different pronunciations, that is, are nonhomophonic ("heterophones"). Heterophones are of particular interest, because in print they are ambiguous; nevertheless, the meaning referred to by a subject is clear when the subject is required to pronounce the item. (See Warren & Warren, 1976, for an illustration of this use.) SinceReprints of this paper are available from David S. Gorfein, Psychology Department, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York 11530. A more complete presentation of the normative data is also available upon request of the unpublished paper, "The Adelphi Homograph Norms." heterophone pronunciation provides excellent pointer readings to their meanings, it is of particular interest to examine how heterophones compare to homographs. They will be useful in our attempts to elucidate po...

eDom: Norming software and relative meaning frequencies for 544 English homonyms

“…One popular method for estimating dominance is via the classification of the free associates generated for a given homonym on the basis of the meaning of the word to which they are related (Geis & Winograd, 1974;Gilhooly & Logie, 1980a, 1980bGorfein, Viviani, & Leddo, 1982;Kausler & Kollasch, 1970;Mirman et al, 2010;Nelson, McEvoy, Walling, & Wheeler, 1980;Twilley et al, 1994), which is related to similar methods of classifying generated definitions (Warren, Bresnick, & Green, 1977), generated sentences (Wollen, Cox, Coahran, Shea, & Kirby, 1980), or sentence completions (Yates, 1978). These methods involve two steps: (1) Participants are provided with an ambiguous word (e.g., BANK) and generate an associate (or other similar response; e.g., MONEY), and (2) a separate group of raters classify these responses on the basis of their intuitions regarding the meanings to which these associates are related (e.g., the <financial> vs. < edge of a river> meanings of BANK).…”

Semantic bias, homograph comprehension, and event-related potentials in schizophrenia

“…The sentence-ending word (adjective/verb) was always congruent with the noun, and in the case of homographs constrained its meaning as either dominant or subordinate. Dominant meanings had probabilities of usage approximately three times greater than subordinate meanings (Chapman et al, 1964;Kausler and Kollasch, 1970;Nelson et al, 1980;Wollen et al, 1980;Onifer and Swinney, 1981;Gorfein et al, 1982).…”

Homograph norms: An alternative approach to determining meaning dominance

“…The overall correlation between other studies with the present method was .70, which is rather remarkable, considering the many different methodologies used (N 461). 1 Meaning dominance values from the data collected in our experiment were compared with those from 12 other previous sets of homograph norms (Azuma, 1996;Cramer, 1970;Gawlick-Grendell & Woltz, 1994;Geis & Winograd, 1974;Gilhooly & Logie, 1980;Gorfein et al, 1982;Kausler & Kollasch, 1970;Nelson et al, 1980;Perfetti et al, 1971;Twilley et al, 1994;Warren et al, 1977;Wollen et al, 1980). This analysis revealed that in some cases, the number of meanings listed for each homograph influenced the dominance values calculated.…”

“…The set of homographs chosen for inclusion in this experiment were selected because they and their associates appeared in an available online word association, rhyme, and wordfragment norms database (Nelson et al, 1998). In selecting words from this database, we made an attempt to use words that also appeared in other previously published homograph norms, and we were able to find 72 such homographs (Azuma, 1996;Cramer, 1970;Gawlick-Grendell & Woltz, 1994;Geis & Winograd, 1974;Gilhooly & Logie, 1980;Gorfein et al, 1982;Kausler & Kollasch, 1970;Nelson et al, 1980;Perfetti et al, 1971;Twilley et al, 1994;Warren et al, 1977;Wollen et al, 1980). Additionally, we selected 125 other homographs from the Nelson database that we were not able to find in the other published homograph norms.…”

“…Gawlick-Grendell and Woltz pointed out that some researchers only reported the two meanings of homographs with the highest frequency, even though many homographs have more than two meanings. They provided examples of studies in which their results were reported in this manner (e.g., Cramer, 1970;Geis & Winograd, 1974;Gorfein, Viviani, & Leddo, 1982;Kausler & Kollasch, 1970). Associates to individual homographs are frequently used as retrieval cues or priming items for homographic words, and in some applications, less dominant meanings are crucial.…”