Resolving Semantic Ambiguity

Resolving Semantic Ambiguity arrrays the work of leading theorists on the issues surrounding the meaning and interpretation of ambiguous text. The chapters are organized around three major themes: (1) retrieval, (2) representation of words, and (3) text as a context. The book offers a number of new challenges to the role of context in language processing, some striking new evidence on the repetition of homographs in different contexts, and new approaches to resolution capable of being incorporated into either modular or network models. In several papers the problem of ambiguity is extended to include the problem of weak ambiguity and understanding text themes. The book provides a unique starting point for researchers approaching the problems of meaning in cognitive science, psychology, and computational linguistics.

I Introduction.- 1. Resolving Semantic Ambiguity: An Introduction.- 2. Varieties of Ambiguity: What Are We Seeking?.- II Lexical Access and Post-Access Processing.- 3. What’s in a Context?.- 4. Dynamic Contextual Processes and Lexical Access.- 5. When Does “Soar” Become “Sore”? Some Comments on the Chapter of Simpson and Kellas.- 6. Lexical Ambiguity and Context: An Activation-Suppression Model.- 7. A Context-Sensitive Frequency-Based Theory of Meaning Achievement.- III Representation.- 8. Accessing the Bilingual Lexicon.- 9. On Knowing How Many Entries.- 10. Systematicity and Semantic Ambiguity.- 11. Some Ambiguities in the Study of Ambiguity.- IV Ambiguity in Text.- 12. On the Comprehension of Lexical Ambiguity by Young Children: Investigations into the Development of Mental Modularity.- 13. Disambiguation and Cognitive Control.- V Cognitive Science and Ambiguity: An Overview and Expansion.- 14. Computational Models of Ambiguity Resolution.- 15. Reflexions on Modularity and Connectionism.- References.- Author Index.