The Organization of Words in Mental Lexicon: Evidence From Word Association Test

Both in psychology and linguistics studies, memory is one of the core of interests amongst researchers. In linguistics, memory is the place where language processes consisting of language perception, storage, and access of words take place. Words, in memory, are stored in complex, clear, well-organized, and ordered networks called nodes, which can be represented by World Wide Web. This word organization in psycholinguistics is referred to mental lexicon. This study aims to investigate what kind of nodes representation stored in mental lexicon of foreign language learners. Word Association Test (WAT), the well-known study method in both psychology and linguistics studies, is employed by using English Swadesh word list as the stimulus to elicit the lexical relation amongst words. The basic principle of the test is giving a stimulus to respondents and asking them to give the very first word coming out of their mind. Respondents are undergraduate students of English Literature a university in Indonesia. Findings of this research support the previous findings stating that non-native speakers tend to make syntagmatic relation, which is mostly dominated by collocation association. Interestingly, the finding also shows that the words network in mental lexicon involves a dynamic development based on experience and perception of the respondents

The Relevance-Based Model of Context in Processing Puns

While the essential role context plays in the understanding of expressions and utterances has never been questioned, the way it is perceived has evolved from a static factor established prior to the process of utterance interpretation, indeed a prerequisite for processing information, to a dynamic entity which emerges in this process. The latter view is espoused by relevance theorists, who define context as “the set of premises used in interpreting an utterance” (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95: 15) and treat it as a mental construct undergoing diverse modifications as the comprehender of an utterance processes and interprets incoming verbal information and other communicative signals supplied by the communicator. The aim of this paper is to consider the usefulness of this model of context for analyzing the derivation of meaning in puns, i.e. utterances in which, instead of its usual function of allowing the comprehender to resolve ambiguities ubiquitous in language and communication, the context plays a different role of leading him to entertain, and often to accept two diverse readings[…

NASARI: a novel approach to a Semantically-Aware Representation of items

The semantic representation of individual word senses and concepts is of fundamental importance to several applications in Natural Language Processing. To date, concept modeling techniques have in the main based their representation either on lexicographic resources, such as WordNet, or on encyclopedic resources, such as Wikipedia. We propose a vector representation technique that combines the complementary knowledge of both these types of resource. Thanks to its use of explicit semantics combined with a novel cluster-based dimensionality reduction and an effective weighting scheme, our representation attains state-of-the-art performance on multiple datasets in two standard benchmarks: word similarity and sense clustering. We are releasing our vector representations at http://lcl.uniroma1.it/nasari/

Synopsis articles in the planning of a trilingual dictionary ; Yilumbu–French–English

A distinction is often drawn between single articles and synopsis articles. A single article is the so-called default article. It does not deviate from the traditional microstructural approach of the dictionary because it presents the minimum data for each lemma sign treated, while a synopsis article gives additional data for each treated lemma. The classical conception of the synopsis article originates with Bergenholtz, Tarp and Wiegand (1999). In their view, synopsis articles which were devised for language for special purposes (LSP) dictionaries have to make provision for the treatment of lemma signs functioning as superordinate terms (general lemmata or topics) as well as their hyponyms. The aim of this article is to present a new lexicographic approach to the study of synopsis articles against the background of a planned trilingual dictionary. It will be shown that synopsis articles have a more general use than its restricted application in LSP dictionaries. In fact, the focus will not be on the treatment of technical or scientific vocabulary but rather on cultural terms. This article also raises among other things, questions about the purpose of the planned dictionary, its target users, different types of microstructures as well as different data categories to be included in synopsis articles.Une distinction est souvent faite entre articles simples et articles synopsis. L'article simple est encore connu sous la dénomination d'article par défaut. Il ne dévie pas de l'approche microstructurelle traditionnelle du dictionnaire parce qu'il présente le minimum pour chaque lemme traité, alors qu'un article synopsis offre des données additives pour chaque lemme traité. La conception classique d'article synopsis est de Bergenholtz, Tarp et Wiegand (1999). De leur point de vue pour les articles synopsis qui ont été conçus pour des dictionnaires de langue de spécialité (LSP), des dispositions doivent être prises pour le traitement de signeslemmes fonctionnant comme termes superordonnés (lemmes généraux ou thèmes) ainsi que leurs hyponymes. L'objectif de cet article est de présenter une approche lexicographique nouvelle pour l'étude des articles synopsis avec en toile de fond un dictionnaire trilingue en proposition. Il sera montré que les articles synopsis ont un usage plus large que leur application limitée aux dictionnaires LSP. En effet, le centre d'intérêt portera non pas sur le traitement des termes du vocabulaire 182 P.A. Mavoungou technique ou scientifique mais plutôt sur des termes culturels. Cet article soulève également entre autres choses des interrogations quant à la visée du dictionnaire proposé, ses utilisateurs cibles, les différents types de microstructures ainsi que les différentes catégories de données à inclure pour chaque article synopsis

A trilingual dictionary Yilumbu–French–English : an ongoing project

In this article, an account is given of the planning of a trilingual dictionary Yilumbu– French–English. The focus is on the target user, the purpose, nature and typology of the planned dictionary. Attention is also paid to some macro- and microstructural issues. For example, all types of lexical items, including multiword lexical items, are given lemma status. Moreover all items are included according to the word tradition and on account of their usage frequency in the corpus. Apart from these aspects, types of dialectal forms as well as the type of special-field lexical items are also discussed. From a microstructural point of view, this article investigates different kinds of data types to be considered for inclusion in complex articles in particular. User-friendliness parameters and innovative access structure procedures also come into play.Cet article rend compte de la planification d'un dictionnaire trilingue yilumbu–français– anglais. Le centre d'intérêt réside au niveau du public cible, l'objectif, la nature et la typologie du dictionnaire proposé. Une attention est aussi accordée à quelques problèmes macro- et microstructurels. Par exemple, tous les types d'items lexicaux, y compris les items lexicaux formés de plusieurs mots, reçoivent le statut de lemme. En outre, tous les termes sont inclus selon la tradition dumot et sur la base de leur fréquence d'emploi dans le corpus. Hormis ces aspects, les types de formes dialectales ainsi que le type d'items lexicaux de spécialité sont également discutés. D'un point de vue microstructurel, cet article explore différents types de données à considérer pour inclusion dans les articles complexes en particulier. Les paramètres de clarté et de lisibilité ainsi que des procédés propre à la structure d'accès sont également pris en compte

What words mean and express: semantics and pragmatics of kind terms and verbs

For many years, it has been common-ground in semantics and in philosophy of language that semantics is in the business of providing a full explanation about how propositional meanings are obtained. This orthodox picture seems to be in trouble these days, as an increasing number of authors now hold that semantics does not deal with thought-contents. Some of these authors have embraced a “thin meanings” view, according to which lexical meanings are too schematic to enter propositional contents. I will suggest that it is plausible to adopt thin semantics for a class of words. However, I’ll also hold that some classes of words, like kind terms, plausibly have richer lexical meanings, and so that an adequate theory of word meaning may have to combine thin and rich semantics

The pragmatics of specialized communication

El presente artículo pretende poner de manifiesto la importancia de la pragmática en relación con la comunicación especializada. La estructura, el contenido y la terminología de los textos especializados se ven afectados por factores como la propia situación comunicativa y el conocimiento, intenciones, expectativas y creencias previos del emisor del texto. La transmisión de tal significado es difícil incluso en una sola lengua. Cuando la transmisión se produce entre dos lenguas, como es el caso de cualquier acto de traducción, las dificultades se multiplican. Por esta razón, es fundamental que los traductores sean conscientes de cómo la pragmática, más que ningún otro componente del lenguaje, puede afectar de forma decisiva a su actividad profesional

An effective, low-cost measure of semantic relatedness obtained from Wikipedia links

This paper describes a new technique for obtaining measures of semantic relatedness. Like other recent approaches, it uses Wikipedia to provide structured world knowledge about the terms of interest. Out approach is unique in that it does so using the hyperlink structure of Wikipedia rather than its category hierarchy or textual content. Evaluation with manually defined measures of semantic relatedness reveals this to be an effective compromise between the ease of computation of the former approach and the accuracy of the latter