Words in the mind

FROM THE BOOK:

AITCHISON, JEAN (1987). AN INTRODUCTION TO THE

MENTAL LEXICON
PUBLISHER: OXFORD, UK ; BLACKWELL, NEW YORK,
NY, USA
 Main aims

 How do humans manage to store so many words?

 How do they find the ones they want?

 What is the nature of human MENTAL LEXICON?

 KEY: ORGANIZATION

 Number of words known by an educated adult:

between 50.000 and 250.000
 In speech, around 6 syllables per sec are produced
 ½ sec needed to detect a non-word or find a real
word

FAST and EFFICIENT word-searching ability:

The large number of words known and the speed with
which they can be located point to the existence of a
highly organized mental lexicon
 Our mental dictionary

 Not alphabetical
 Fluid
 Flexible
 Ever-growing
 Detailed (lots of information stored in each entry)
 Interconnected
 Clues to the mental lexicon organization

 Word-finding efforts
 “slip of the tongue”
 “tip of the tongue”

 normal speakers

 people with speech disorders

 How can we define the meanings of words?
The fixed-fuzzy issue

The fixed meaning assumption The fuzzy meaning assumption

Words meaning is: Words meaning is:

• Basic • Fuzzy
• Fixed • Slippery
• Firm • Ever-changing

For the MENTAL LEXICON:

the answer will affect our view of HOW people
represent meanings in their minds
 The fixed meaning assumption

Words meaning can be identified by defining a set of

core criteria
 The ‘check-list’ theory: for each word we have an
internal list of essential characteristics
IF something has these characteristics, we label it
with the corresponding word
 Aristotle school: words have a hard core of
ESSENTIAL MEANING, surrounded by other
characteristics which are not essential (can be
omitted)
 (ex: the ‘that’s impossible’ test, bachelor)
The fixed meaning assumption: problems

 How can we choose the criteria?

 Which attributes go on to the check list?

Not every word can be easily defined:

 Not obvious way to draw a dividing line between
ESSENTIAL and NON-ESSENTIAL characteristics
 The fuzzy meaning assumption

Word meanings are inevitably fluid, for 2 reasons:

1. Fuzzy edges  there is no clear edge where one

word ends and another begins. Ex: vase-cup-bowl

2. Family resemblances  a group of words can

share some characteristics, but not all of them at
the same time.
Ex: GAMES: ring-a-rose/chess/tennis
 Prototype theories

How humans cope with this fuzziness?

Does everyone operate the same way with meanings?
How do we organize meanings?

Humans tend to find some INSTANCES of a word

more central/basic than others
We have in mind a prototype with specific
characteristics
we label things IF they have a REASONABLE
amount of those characteristics (≠ check list)
Some examples: Eleanor Rosch’s experiments

 Birds: canary – peacock – penguin

 Colours: red – orange red – purple red

Experiments shown very consistent results, we use

categories when we have to label a concept

Tipicality rating Category verification

 Conclusions

 When people categorize objects, they bear in mind

an IDEAL EXEMPLAR  A PROTOTYPE

 MATCHING is the process used to decide whether

something is a member of that category

 NOT every characteristic has to match, it has to be

sufficiently similar to the prototype
 Conclusions

Prototypes help us coping with:

1. UNTYPICAL EXAMPLES We still recognize

penguins as birds

2. DAMAGED EXAMPLES We still recognize a

three legged tiger as a quadruped

Prototype theory is a good way to interpret how

humans deal with LARGE CATEGORIES
 Some problems with prototypes

A general problem:

Interference between IDENTIFICATION

CRITERIA and STORED KNOWLEDGE

They often are the same or largely overlap, but

sometimes not: the second influences our judgment
Inevitable link PERCEPTION-CONCEPTION

(ex: the story of the farmer: bull vs. cow)

 1. The diversity of the characteristics

The properties of a prototype are heterogeneous

 result: prototypes differ one another in type!
ANIMALS vs. COLOURS

A prototypical BIRD is defined A prototypical RED is defined

by some TYPICALITY by some CENTRALITY
CONDITIONS: CONDITIONS:
- Has feathers, wings, beak
- It flies It occupies a central place
- It lays eggs within a range of red shades
- It makes a nest
 2. The difficulty of arranging them in order of
priority

 In which order can we list the necessary conditions

which define a prototype?
 How do we choose which one is more crucial than
another?
Ex: BIRD
- Has feathers
- Has wings  bats have wings, they are not birds!
- It flies  ducks and penguins don’t fly!
- It makes a nest  other animals too
 3. The problem of knowing where to stop

 We cannot put on to the list everything we know

about an object/concept/etc. (i.e. our
ENCYCLOPAEDIC KNOWLEDGE)
 Sometimes it’s difficult to separate out the meaning
of a word from the FRAME where it occurs
Ex: define the word zebra  someone will activate a
whole zoo frame, others won’t.
In conclusion:
words cannot be dealt with in isolation,
they are stored in relation to one another
 WORDS INTERACTION

Words cannot be treated as separate items.

They are interdependent and we understand them as
interdependent items:
red  orange  yellow
Hot  warm  cold

The “atomic
How does the globule” viewpoint
mind cope Two broad
with these viewpoints
relationships? The “cobweb”
viewpoint
How does the mind cope with these relationships?
Two broad viewpoints

• Words are globules,

• Words are considered as
made of “meaning
related because of the links
atoms”
that the speakers build
• Related words have
between them
atoms in common
 1. The “atomic globule” viewpoint

 There is a universal SET of basic atoms of meaning:

SEMANTIC PRIMITIVES

Innate part of human Organized differently in

mind different languages

Biologically given (different segmentation

notions of the semantic space)
 1. The “atomic globule” viewpoint

 How can we define the basic atoms?

 Is there a definitive list?
 Do they suffice to describe every meaning?

Schank (1972) on Verbs: Miller&Johnson-Laird (1976) on

MOVE, INGEST, CONC, Objects:
MTRANS, ATRANS… Linking primitives to perception.
PLACE, SIZE, HORIZONTAL,
Es: VERTICAL, BOTTOM, TOP…
breathe, dink, eat ! Not everything is
INGEST PERCEIVABLE !
Buy, give, steal  ATRANS Es: to promise, to disagree
 2. The “cobweb” viewpoint

Words are linked together in a gigantic multi-

dimensional cobweb NETWORK THEORIES:
A network is an interconnected system,
made of nodes and links.
Collins&Quillian
model
“Retrieval time
from semantic
memory»
(1969)
HOW DO THESE INTERCONNECTIONS WORK?

1. Linguistic habits: pen +pencil, moon + stars.

Strong ties, easily revealed by free association tests.

DIFFERENT TYPES
OF
ASSOCIATIONS!
1. Co-ordination
2. Collocation
3. Super-
ordination
4. Synonymy
HOW DO THESE INTERCONNECTIONS WORK?
1. Linguistic habits

CO-ORDINATION seems to be the strongest link.

Hypothesis confirmed by:
The most common slips of the tongue: left-
right/today-tomorrow
Difficulties in distinguishing co-ordinate items in
aphasic subjects:
1. lemon-orange vs. lemon-boot experiments
2. Recognition tasks experiments (squeezing a ball)

Some CO-ORDINATES are so strongly linked that

brain-damaged people tend to confuse them in
production/comprehension, but, at the same time, their link
is recognized faster then others
HOW DO THESE INTERCONNECTIONS WORK?
2. Learning from children

Finding out how babies build up a store of words =

Additional clues as to how interconnections are created.
3 essential steps
1st step LABELLING:
Symbolization, a string of sounds is
used to name something
2nd step PACKAGING: what can
be packed together under the same
label?
3rd step NETWORK BUILDING:
how do I link words one another?
 LABELLING

Some clarifications:

 To symbolize = to realize that a particular

combination of sounds means od symbolize a certain
object.
 It emerges around the ages of 1 and 2
 Before: Babbling is an muscle exercise. At this
stage, infants have not attach yet the actual meaning
to the word. They are still experimenting, making
noises.
 PACKAGING

 Children package meanings in a different way

 They do not necessarily focus on the same
characteristics/priorities
Under- They assume a word refers to a NARROWER
extension range of things
Ex: white page/ white snow
(Leopold)

Over- They assume a word refers to a LARGER range of

extension things
Ex: quack=duck, cup of milk, eagle on a coin
(Vygotsky)
 NETWORK BUILDING

 A six year old child has a passive vocabulary of about

14.000 words  they need to be put together into a
semantic network
 Network building is a slow process: children tend
to link a word only with the specific context where
they learned it
 Children use COLLOCATION principles more than
CO-ORDINATION principles in free association:
Children associations Adults associations
TABLE - eat TABLE - chair
DARK - night DARK - light
SEND - letter SEND - receive
 Word production & Word recognition

Production Recognition
Language information
processing:
• From the • From the Semantic  syntactic 
meaning sounds to
to the the phonological info
sounds meaning

Production &
Recognition =
mirror images
of one another
 Words production: Hypothesis & Theories

1st process: DECISION MAKING!

Underneath process, even when we are not conscious.
 blends: an evidence that alternative words are often
considered during speech
Blends examples Aphasic speech:
“I forget (don’t remember)
seeing you, sir. I remember
Buggage  baggage + luggage the other document (doctor
+ gentlemen) and was
Tummach tummy + stomach plazed (pleased + glad) to
see the other document.”
Evious evident + obvious
(Butterworth, 1979)
 Words production: Hypothesis & Theories

Blends suggestion: we activate a number of words in the area of

the required word and then suppress the words we don’t want.
Spreading/Interactive activation principle:

The initial connectionist

input activates models of
Relevant links Unwanted
words
get more and links tend to language
spreading
more activated fade away perception/
along the
connections production
 Words recognition

 Basic problems in normal speech:

1. Sounds are altered by their neighbours
2. Sound segments cannot be separated, they tend to
merge
3. Noises cover the sounds.
So, how do we understand these sounds?
Guessing
 Matching the portion heard with
their mental lexicon
 Choosing the best fit
 Filling in gaps
 Words recognition

The role of context in detecting sounds:

 Paint the fence and the ?ate.  GATE

 Check the calendar and the ?ate.  DATE

 Ho freddo, chiudi la ?orta.

 L’ho fatta ieri, assaggia la ?orta.
 Words recognition

Summing up the process:

1. To split up the stream of sounds into words
2. To identify the words

1. SOUNDS  PHONEMES

• Words frequency: common words 2. PHONEMES  MORPHEMES

are recognized faster. Why? 
Network theory preferential 3.  Then fitted to words
attachment.
• The role of context: same as
guessing for phonemes
An example of connectionist model.
TRACE (McClelland & Elman, 1986)

Connectionist model of spoken

word recognition/production
INTERACTIVE ACTIVATION
among processing units
unit = GUESSING about the
input

Three levels organization:

1. Feature/input
2. Phoneme
3. Words
Three types of connectivity:
1. Bottom-up
2. Lateral (i.e., within-layer)
3. Top-down