The representation of homophones: Evidence from anomia

Abstract

Current models of word production provide different accounts of the representations of homophones--words that sound the same but have different meanings (e.g., muscle/mussel; (a) walk/(to) walk). A point of disagreement concerns frequency: While some models assume that homophone processing varies as a function of the frequency of the individual homophonic forms, other models predict that the combined frequency of the homophonic forms (e.g., the frequency of muscle+mussel) determines how homophones are processed. These contrasting views were tested in a series of experiments with AW, an English-speaking brain-damaged woman who showed anomia, a deficit of word phonology retrieval in speech production. AW's semantic processing was intact. In oral naming, we observed a frequency effect: AW was significantly more successful in producing high- as opposed to low-frequency words. Our results consistently demonstrated that AW's successful naming reflected the frequency of the individual homophonic forms, rather than the combined frequency of the homophonic forms. Our results provide support for models of speech production that identify the frequency of the individual homophones as the critical factor in homophone naming.

Friends and foes in the lexicon: Homophone naming in aphasia.

“…Likewise, when translating words, evidence suggests bilinguals can rely at least partially on direct L1 to L2 word mappings (e.g., Chen & Leung, 1989; Kroll & Curley, 1988), which could supplement or circumvent Stage-1 retrieval. In contrast, the majority of the failures to replicate the frequency inheritance effect using controlled experimentation has involved naming from pictures or definitions (Anton-Mendez et al, 2012; Bonin & Fayol, 2002; Caramazza et al, 2001, Experiments 1a & 2a; Cuetos et al 2010, Experiments 1a, 2a, 3a; Miozzo et al, 2004, Experiments 1, 2, 3). Commensurate with the dual nature account, when the requirement of semantically-driven Stage-1 mapping is reduced, the negative impact of homophony will be weaker, and homophony’s benefits will prevail in determining its net impact on performance.…”

“…Specifically, low frequency and high frequency homophone counterparts differed in naming times and patterned similarly to LF and HF control conditions, respectively (for related findings, see Anton-Mendez et al, 2012; Bonin & Fayol, 2002; Schiller & Schatzman, 2004). In a related study, Miozzo et al, (2004) studied homophone naming from pictures and descriptions in an individual with stroke aphasia who demonstrated a word-finding impairment. For this individual, accuracy on (low frequency) homophone targets was similar to LF controls but less than HF controls and high frequency homophonic counterparts.…”

Density pervades: An analysis of phonological neighbourhood density effects in aphasic speakers with different types of naming impairment

“…Some work suggests that words with a highly frequent homophone counterpart may be facilitated in their production, a phenomenon termed frequency inheritance (Dell, 1990; Jescheniak and Levelt, 1994). Though the questionable reliability of this phenomenon has sparked controversy (Bonin & Fayol, 2002; Caramazza, Costa, Miozzo & Bi, 2001; Caramazza, Bi, Costa, & Miozzo, 2004; Jescheniak, Meyer & Levelt, 2003; Miozzo & Caramazza, 2005; Miozzo, Jacobs, & Singer, 2004) the hypothesis of shared phonology between the meanings of a homophone has received support from remediation studies of anomia (Biedermann & Nickels, 2008). In Experiment 3, we sought to remove the possible confounding influence of frequency inheritance by including only target names that did not have a high frequency homophonic counterpart.…”

Age of acquisition estimates for 1,208 ambiguous and polysemous words

“…Furthermore, to an ambiguity researcher, an understanding of how the AoA ratings of the multiple senses of ambiguous words influences the processing of words can inform models that describe how ambiguous words are represented in the mental lexicon (cf. Miozzo, Jacobs, & Singer, 2004) and may provide insights into the operations of lexical processing, and linguistic architecture, in general.…”