Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

by Steven L. Small, Garrison W Cottrell, Michael K Tanenhaus
Released October 2013
Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
ISBN: 9780080510132

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

The most frequently used words in English are highly ambiguous; for example, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary lists 94 meanings for the word "run" as a verb alone. Yet people rarely notice this ambiguity. Solving this puzzle has commanded the efforts of cognitive scientists for many years. The solution most often identified is "context": we use the context of utterance to determine the proper meanings of words and sentences. The problem then becomes specifying the nature of context and how it interacts with the rest of an understanding system. The difficulty becomes especially apparent in the attempt to write a computer program to understand natural language. Lexical ambiguity resolution (LAR), then, is one of the central problems in natural language and computational semantics research.

A collection of the best research on LAR available, this volume offers eighteen original papers by leading scientists. Part I, Computer Models, describes nine attempts to discover the processes necessary for disambiguation by implementing programs to do the job. Part II, Empirical Studies, goes into the laboratory setting to examine the nature of the human disambiguation mechanism and the structure of ambiguity itself.

A primary goal of this volume is to propose a cognitive science perspective arising out of the conjunction of work and approaches from neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, and artificial intelligence--thereby encouraging a closer cooperation and collaboration among these fields.

Lexical Ambiguity Resolution is a valuable and accessible source book for students and cognitive scientists in AI, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, or theoretical linguistics.

Table of contents

  1. Cover image
  2. Title page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Copyright
  5. Foreword
  6. Preface
  7. PART I: COMPUTER MODELS
    1. Chapter 1: Word Expert Parsing Revisited in a Cognitive Science Perspective
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Lexical Ambiguity Resolution
      4. 3 Word Expert Parsing and Psycholinguistics
      5. 4 Conclusions and Further Research
      6. Appendix: An Example Word Expert
    2. Chapter 2: Lexical Ambiguity Resolution in a Deterministic Parser
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Syntactic Context
      4. 3 The Role of Agreement in Handling Ambiguity
      5. 4 Possible Uses for Agreement in English
    3. Chapter 3: Resolving Lexical Ambiguity Computationally with Spreading Activation and Polaroid Words
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Marker Passing
      4. 3 Polaroid Words
      5. 4 What Polaroid Words Can’t Do
      6. 5 Psychological Reality
      7. 6 Conclusion
      8. Acknowledgments
    4. Chapter 4: Are Vague Words Ambiguous?
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 What is a Vague Word?
      4. 3 Frame Selection as Word Disambiguation
      5. 4 Frame Selection as Concept Refinement
      6. 5 Comparison to Other Work
      7. 6 Conclusion
      8. Acknowledgments
    5. Chapter 5: Disambiguation in a Lexically Based Sentence Understanding System
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 A Lexically Based Sentence Understanding System
      3. 2 Some Types of Ambiguity
      4. 3 How to Traverse an Ambiguity Choice Tree
      5. 4 The Syntactic Disambiguation Mechanism
      6. 5 Encyclopedic Disambiguation Mechanism
      7. 6 Solving Additional Deep Understanding Problems
      8. 7 Conclusions
      9. Acknowledgments
    6. Chapter 6: An Account of Coherence, Semantic Relations, Metonymy, and Lexical Ambiguity Resolution
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Coherence, Semantic Relations, and Metonymy
      4. 3 Coherence and Lexical Ambiguity Resolution
      5. 4 Collative Semantics
      6. 5 Example
      7. 6 Summary
      8. Acknowledgments
    7. Chapter 7: A Model of Lexical Access of Ambiguous Words
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Lexical Access
      4. 3 The Seidenberg et al. Model of Lexical Access
      5. 4 A Connectionist Model of Lexical Access
      6. 5 An Example Run
      7. 6 Discussion
      8. 7 Conclusion
      9. Acknowledgments
    8. Chapter 8: Distributed Representations of Ambiguous Words and Their Resolution in a Connectionist Network
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 The Model
      4. 3 Resolution
      5. 4 Successive Stable States
      6. 5 Conclusion
      7. Acknowledgments
    9. Chapter 9: Process Synchronization, Lexical Ambiguity Resolution, and Aphasia
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 HOPE Models Normal Sentence Processing
      4. 3 Viewing Ambiguity in Processing
      5. 4 An Interpretation of Neural Ambiguity—Neural Evidence of Multiple Representation and Multiple Effect
      6. 5 Representation of Ambiguity in HOPE
      7. 6 Aphasic Evidence and HOPE Representations
      8. 7 The HOPE Lexicon—A Distributed Representation of a Word
      9. 8 Linguistic Performance Assumptions Inherent in the HOPE System Design
      10. 9 The Internal Control of Disambiguation in HOPE
      11. 10 Parallelism in HOPE
      12. 11 A Summary of the HOPE Architecture
      13. 12 The Role of Time in HOPE Processing
      14. 13 Syntactic Disambiguation over Time
      15. 14 Developing Hypothesized Patient Profiles—The Role of Disambiguation
      16. 15 Conclusions
      17. Acknowledgments
  8. PART II: EMPIRICAL STUDIES
    1. Chapter 10: Implications of Lexical Ambiguity Resolution for Word Recognition and Comprehension
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 An Overview of Research in Lexical Ambiguity
      3. 2 Applications of Lexical Ambiguity
      4. 3 Concluding Remarks
      5. Acknowledgments
    2. Chapter 11: Lexical Processing and Ambiguity Resolution: An Autonomous Process in an Interactive Box
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Parameters of Lexical Processing
      4. 3 Accessing Ambiguous Words in the Lexicon: Ambiguity Resolution
      5. 4 On Backward Priming: Why It Isn’t
      6. 5 The Lexicon: An Interactive Box with an Autonomous Component Process
      7. Acknowledgments
    3. Chapter 12: Is Multiple Access an Artifact of Backward Priming?
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Some Background
      3. 2 Lexical Priming
      4. 3 Cross-Modal Lexical Priming
      5. 4 Backward Priming
      6. 5 Some Experimental Studies
      7. 6 General Discussion
      8. 7 Conclusion
      9. 8 Coda: Modularity and Lexical Ambiguity
    4. Chapter 13: Sentential Context and Lexical Access
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Methodological Considerations
      3. 2 Conclusions
      4. Acknowledgments
    5. Chapter 14: The Verb Mutability Effect: Studies of the Combinatorial Semantics of Nouns and Verbs
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. Part I Experiments on Where Change of Meaning Occurs
      3. 1 PILOT STUDY
      4. 2 Experiment 1
      5. 3 Experiment 2
      6. Part II Experiments on What Kinds of Meaning Change Occur
      7. 4 Experiment 3a
      8. 5 Experiment 3b
      9. Part III General Discussion
      10. Acknowledgments
    6. Chapter 15: (Almost) Never Letting Go: Inference Retention during Text Understanding
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Introduction
      3. 2 Background
      4. 3 Conditional Retention
      5. 4 The Big Picture
      6. 5 Conclusion
      7. Acknowledgments
    7. Chapter 16: Neuropsychology of Lexical Ambiguity Resolution: The Contribution of Divided Visual Field Studies
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 The Divided Visual Field Methodology
      3. 2 Lexical Access of Ambiguous Word Meanings
      4. 3 Specific Considerations
      5. 4 Summary
      6. Acknowledgments
    8. Chapter 17: Tracking the Time Course of Meaning Activation
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Lexical Ambiguity
      3. 2 An Alternative Interpretation of the Lexical Ambiguity Results
      4. 3 Event-Related Potentials
      5. 4 Experiment 1
      6. 5 Experiment 2
      7. 6 Conclusions
      8. Acknowledgments
      9. Appendix 1
      10. Appendix 2
    9. Chapter 18: Cognitive Topology and Lexical Networks
      1. Publisher Summary
      2. 1 Cognitive Topology versus Semantic Features
      3. 2 Two Levels of Prototype Structure
      4. 3 The Problem
      5. 7 The Reflexive Schemas
      6. 8 The Excess Schema
      7. 9 The Repetition Schema
      8. 10 Some Metaphorical Senses
      9. 11 Motivation
      10. 12 More Metaphorical Senses
      11. 13 Image-Schemas as Links between Perception and Reason
      12. 14 The Nature of Image-Schema Transformations
      13. 16 Conclusion
  9. Index

Product information

  • Title: Lexical Ambiguity Resolution
  • Author(s): Steven L. Small, Garrison W Cottrell, Michael K Tanenhaus
  • Release date: October 2013
  • Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
  • ISBN: 9780080510132