Word Processing

Cai, Zhenguang G.; Vigliocco, Gabriella

doi:10.1002/9781119170174.epcn303

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 168 publications

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“…They automatically converge on lexical choices during object naming tasks (e.g., whether to use couch or sofa to name a piece of furniture; Brennan & Clark, 1996; Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). They are also found to repeat each other’s syntactic structure (e.g., actives vs. passives) when they take turns to describe depicted events (Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, 2000; Cai, Pickering, & Branigan, 2012). Some other forms of alignment may reflect more strategic efforts to take a shared perspective with a conversational partner.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Research on lexical ambiguity resolution has shown that comprehenders are extremely sensitive to contextual and distributional factors when selecting a meaning for a semantically ambiguous word such as “bark” (Cai & Vigliocco, in press; Twilley & Dixon, 2000; Vitello & Rodd, 2015). The semantic cues present in preceding words play a key role in the disambiguation of ambiguous words within sentences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition

Cai

Gilbert

Davis

et al. 2017

Cognitive Psychology

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Speech carries accent information relevant to determining the speaker's linguistic and social background. A series of web-based experiments demonstrate that accent cues can modulate access to word meaning. In Experiments 1-3, British participants were more likely to retrieve the American dominant meaning (e.g., hat meaning of "bonnet") in a word association task if they heard the words in an American than a British accent. In addition, results from a speeded semantic decision task (Experiment 4) and sentence comprehension task (Experiment 5) confirm that accent modulates on-line meaning retrieval such that comprehension of ambiguous words is easier when the relevant word meaning is dominant in the speaker's dialect. Critically, neutral-accent speech items, created by morphing British- and American-accented recordings, were interpreted in a similar way to accented words when embedded in a context of accented words (Experiment 2). This finding indicates that listeners do not use accent to guide meaning retrieval on a word-by-word basis; instead they use accent information to determine the dialectic identity of a speaker and then use their experience of that dialect to guide meaning access for all words spoken by that person. These results motivate a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition in which comprehenders determine key characteristics of their interlocutor and use this knowledge to guide word meaning access.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition

Cai

Gilbert

Davis

et al. 2017

Cognitive Psychology

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“…A role for context in language processing has long been recognized, with growing attention from researchers in the last decade or so (see reviews in Cai & Vigliocco, 2018 ; Meteyard & Vigliocco, 2018 ; Yee & Thompson-Schill, 2016 ). It is however the case that most current work still focuses on a single contextual factor.…”

Section: Non-arbitrariness In Language Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Situating Language in the Real-World: The Role of Multimodal Iconicity and Indexicality

Murgiano

Motamedi

Vigliocco

2021

Journal of Cognition

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In the last decade, a growing body of work has convincingly demonstrated that languages embed a certain degree of non-arbitrariness (mostly in the form of iconicity, namely the presence of imagistic links between linguistic form and meaning). Most of this previous work has been limited to assessing the degree (and role) of non-arbitrariness in the speech (for spoken languages) or manual components of signs (for sign languages). When approached in this way, non-arbitrariness is acknowledged but still considered to have little presence and purpose, showing a diachronic movement towards more arbitrary forms. However, this perspective is limited as it does not take into account the situated nature of language use in face-to-face interactions, where language comprises categorical components of speech and signs, but also multimodal cues such as prosody, gestures, eye gaze etc. We review work concerning the role of context-dependent iconic and indexical cues in language acquisition and processing to demonstrate the pervasiveness of non-arbitrary multimodal cues in language use and we discuss their function. We then move to argue that the online omnipresence of multimodal non-arbitrary cues supports children and adults in dynamically developing situational models.

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“…A role for context in language processing has long been recognized, with growing attention from researchers in the last decade or so (see reviews in Cai & Vigliocco, 2018;Meteyard & Vigliocco, 2018;Yee & Thompson-Schill, 2016). It is however the case that most current work still focuses on a single contextual factor.…”

Section: Non-arbitrariness In Language Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language is less arbitrary than one thinks: Iconicity and Indexicality in real-world language learning and processing

Murgiano¹,

Motamedi²,

Vigliocco³

2020

Preprint

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In the last decade, a growing body of work has convincingly demonstrated that languages embed a certain degree of non-arbitrariness (mostly in the form of iconicity, namely the presence of imagistic links between linguistic form and meaning). Most of this previous work has been limited to assessing the degree (and role) of non-arbitrariness in the speech (for spoken languages) or manual components of signs (for sign languages). When approached in this way, non-arbitrariness is acknowledged but still considered to have little presence andpurpose, showing a diachronic movement towards more arbitrary forms. However, this perspective is limited as it does not take into account the situated nature of language use in face-to-face interactions, where language comprises categorical components of speech and signs, but also multimodal cues such as prosody, gestures, eye gaze etc. We review work concerning the role of context-dependent iconic and indexical cues in language acquisition and processing to demonstrate the pervasiveness of non-arbitrary multimodal cues in language use and we discuss their function. We then move to argue that the online omnipresence of multimodal non-arbitrary cues supports children and adults in dynamically developing situational models.

show abstract

Word Processing

Cited by 7 publications

References 168 publications

Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition

Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition

Situating Language in the Real-World: The Role of Multimodal Iconicity and Indexicality

Language is less arbitrary than one thinks: Iconicity and Indexicality in real-world language learning and processing

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