Abstract
This paper tests psychologists' frequent assumption that dictionaries are psychologically realistic models of polysemy in the mental lexicon. Psychologists have not often explored the nature of polysemy, and lexicographers' methods have not involved scientific sampling of usages or informants. It is argued, however, that the lexicographic technique of citation sorting is an effective way of discovering sense differences. Here this technique was used in three tasks involving usage samples for 24 high- and low-frequency nouns varying widely in degree of polysemy in the dictionary. Analyses of agreement within and between subjects showed that subjects consistently judged and substantially agreed upon the major senses of most nouns, but that few nouns in either frequency group were perceived to have more than three significant senses. Additionally, the possibility that larger usage samples will bias people to make more sense groupings was found not to be true, suggesting that the larger number of senses lexicographers create for high-frequency words are not artifacts of larger usage samples.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Anderson, R. C., & Ortony, A. (1975). On putting apples into bottles—A problem of polysemy.Cognitive Psychology, 7, 167–180.
Barclay, J. R., Bransford, J. D., Franks, J. J., McCarrell, N. S., & Nitsch, K. (1974). Comprehension and semantic flexibility.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 471–481.
Bierwisch, M. (1981). Basic issues in the development of word meaning. In W. Deutsch (Ed.),The child's construction of language (pp. 341–380). New York: Academic Press.
Byrd, R. J., Calzolari, N., Chodorow, M. S., Klavans, J. L., Neff, M. S., & Rizk, O. A. (1987).Tools and methods for computational lexicology (RC 12642, No. 56847). Yorktown Heights, NY: IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
Caramazza, A., Grober, E. H., & Zurif, E. B. (1974).A psycholinguistic investigation of polysemy: The meanings of LINE. Unpublished manuscript, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
Churchland, P. M. (1979).Scientific realism and the plasticity of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, H. H. (1973). The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 335–359.
Deese, J. (1967). Meaning and change of meaning.American Psychologist, 22, 641–651.
Durkin, K., & Manning, J. (1989). Polysemy and the subjective lexicon: Semantic relatedness and the salience of intraword senses.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18, 577–611.
Edwards, D. (1983).Foundationalism in the philosophy of science and in semantics. Unpublished manuscript, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
Feller, W. (1950).An introduction to probability theory and its applications. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Jackendoff, R. (1983).Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Quinn, J. G. (1976). To define true meaning.Nature, 264, 635–636.
Katz, J. J., & Fodor, J. A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory.Language, 39, 170–210.
Kelly, E., & Stone, P. (1975).Computer recognition of English word senses. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Kucera, H., & Francis, W. (1967).Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.
Kurylowitz, J. (1955). [Notes on word meanings].Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 3, 73–81.
MacNamara, J. (1971). Parsimony and the lexicon.Language, 47, 359–374.
Miller, G. A. (1969). A psychological method to investigate verbal concepts.Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6, 169–191.
Miller G. A., Fellbaum, C., Kegl, J., & Miller, K. (1988).Wordnet: An electronic lexical reference system based on theories of lexical memory (Report No. 11). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Cognitive Science Laboratory.
Miller, G. A., & Gildea, P. M. (1987). How children learn words.Scientific American, 258, 94–99.
Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957).The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Panman, O. (1982). Homonymy and polysemy.Lingua, 58, 105–136.
Quine, W. v. O. (1960).Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Reder, L. M., Anderson, J. R., & Bjork, R. A. (1974). A semantic intepretation of encoding specificity.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 102, 648–656.
Rosch, E., & Mervis, C. (1975). Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories.Cognitive Psychology, 7, 573–605.
Schoen, L. M. (1988). Semantic flexibility and core meaning.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 17, 113–123.
Shipstone, E. I. (1960). Some variables affecting pattern conception.Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 74, 1–41.
Tulving, E., & Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.Psychological Review, 80, 352–373.
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1975). Springfield, M: G. & C. Merriam.
Weinreich, U. (1980).On semantics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
West, M. (1953).A general service list of English words with semantic frequencies and a supplementary word-list for the writing of popular science and technology. London: Longmans Green.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958).Philosophical investigations, New York: Macmillan.
Zgusta, L. (1971).Manual of lexicography. The Hague: Mouton.
Zipf, G. K. (1945). The meaning-frequency relationship of words.Journal of General Psychology, 33, 251–256.
Zipf, G. K. (1949).Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was partially supported by grants from the Spencer and Sloan Foundations to George A. Miller.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jorgensen, J.C. The psychological reality of word senses. J Psycholinguist Res 19, 167–190 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01077415
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01077415
Keywords
- Cognitive Psychology
- Realistic Model
- Word Sense
- Frequency Group
- Mental Lexicon