This paper takes issue with the view of conceptual structures as autonomous syntactic structures generated by syntactic formation rules. Instead, it adopts the position developed by Croft and Cruse (2004), in showing that linguistic knowledge -- knowledge of meaning and form -- is basically conceptual structure. In fact the, fundamental problem…

We represent events as composed of participants. In "Joan was eating lasagna in the lecture hall," for example, this eating event is "partitioned" into participants, including at least Joan, the lasagna, and the lecture hall. In this dissertation, I address two questions about events and the participants that populate them:…

In three experiments, we examine the effects of semantic context and word concreteness on the mapping of existing meanings to new words. We developed a new-word-learning paradigm in which participants were required to discover the meaning of a new-word form from a specific verbal context. The stimulus materials were manipulated according to word…

Semantic categories across languages appear to reflect both universal conceptual tendencies and linguistic convention. To accommodate this pattern of constrained variation, many theories assume the existence of a universal conceptual space and explain cross-language variation in category extension as language-specific partitions of that space.…

We investigated the influence of word class and translation ambiguity on cross-linguistic representation and processing. Bilingual speakers of English and Spanish performed translation production and translation recognition tasks on nouns and verbs in both languages. Words either had a single translation or more than one translation. Translation…

THE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF DELUSIONAL CONCEPTS IN THE INTERVIEW LANGUAGE OF PSYCHOTIC PATIENT IS DESCRIBED. THE TECHNIQUE IS BASED ON THE SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL DEVISED BY OSGOOD, SUCI, AND TANNENBAUM. COMPUTATIONAL PROCEDURES ARE USED FOR THE DETECTION OF CLUSTERS OF KEYWORDS. THESE CLUSTERS PROVIDE A "NATURAL" CLASSIFICATION OF PEOPLE AND…

English, and presumably any natural language, contains a small group of expressions referring to species of things found in nature. These species are defined by their internal structure, determined by genetics in the case of living things and by chemical or physical properties in the case of others. The reference of these terms is determined by…

Ideas and studies in the psycholinguistics of meaning are discussed. (DB)

A major concern in recent research is whether perceptual or functional information is of primary importance in children's early word meanings. In the study described here, artificial objects were used so that form and function could be independently manipulated. There were 57 subjects, ranging in age from 2.5 years to adulthood. The subjects were…

The nature of the task of defining words by means of other words and the development of language responses (from children aged four to seven) are discussed in terms of a linguistic analysis of the definitional form and its semantic relations. (Author/RM)

Two types of operating principles thought to play an important role in early lexical development are discussed. The principles are those concerned with: (1) assignment of reference or meaning to words; and (2) formation and evolution of categories. Discussion also addresses related issues, such as the developmentally important relationship between…

It is suggested that twin discourse functions are served by thematization and topicalization, the former providing stable referential focus and the latter providing momentary referential focus. (Author/AM)

Eighty-four elementary school children participated in a two-part experiment replicating an earlier experiment that tested the hypothesis that children would offer semantic explanations for words presented orally more frequently than for words presented in written form. This experiment used subjects from a population different in socioeconomic…

Discusses the findings of six studies that were undertaken to explore the phenomenon of semantic priming, questioning whether it is semantically or associatively based. Results indicated that the role of semantics in the priming process is somewhat limited. In addition, these results indicated that the amount of priming observed is somewhat task…