Word knowledge and word usage

Abstract

This special issue, together with its companion issue to appear in Lingue e Linguaggio, stems from the NetWordS Final Conference Word knowledge and word usage: representations and processes in the mental lexicon.* The conference, held on the 30th and 31st of March, and the 1st of April 2015 in Pisa, concluded the 4-year NetWordS project, the European Network of Word Structure funded by the European Science Foundation within the Research Networking Programme. In line with the highly multidisciplinary profile of NetWordS agenda, the conference offered a comprehensive and inclusive forum focussing on two main lines of lexical inquiry: (i) usage-based approaches to bootstrapping word form and structure (morpho-phonological and morpho-syntactic issues), including: acquisition of lexical categories, emergence of morphological structure, lexical memories, anticipatory prediction-based mechanisms of word recognition, word production, frequency-based models of lexical productivity, word encoding, models of lexical architecture, family-based effects in word processing, word reading and writing; (ii) usage-based approaches to word meanings (lexical semantics and pragmatics in morphologically simple and complex words), including: distributional semantics, compound interpretation, concept composition and coercion, conceptualization of perception and action, time and space in the lexicon, metonymy and metaphor, lexico-semantic relations, perceptual grounding and embodied cognition, context-based and encyclopedic knowledge, semantic association and categorization. The multidisciplinary focus on word knowledge and word usage promoted by the Conference led participants to openly discuss an impressive range of approaches and empirical data: priming and lexical decision in a number of contexts, distributional semantics and models of semantic composition, neural networks, machine learning and mathematical modelling of empirical evidence, as well as their neuro-biological and neuro-functional correlates