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Recent research shows that the judged likelihood of properties of modified nouns ("baby ducks have webbed feet") is reduced relative to judgments for unmodified nouns ("ducks have webbed feet"). This modification effect has been taken as evidence both for and against the idea that combined concepts automatically inherit properties from their constituent concepts. Experiments 1 and 2 replicate this effect and demonstrate a reversed modification effect with false properties. That is, false properties are judged more likely with modification (e.g., "purple candles have teeth" is judged more likely than "candles have teeth"). These experiments also show that properties that are neither generically true nor false are unaffected by modification. Experiments 3 and 4 manipulate participants' expectation of contrast by showing modified and unmodified nouns that either match or mismatch in terms of a property and show that the judged likelihood of properties depends on the expectations of contrast set up by the manipulation. These results show that the modification effect is primarily driven by participants' understanding of the relation of subcategories to categories, rather than by the features of the concepts being combined, suggesting that the process of property attribution in combined concepts is strongly affected by pragmatic factors and is less strongly dependent on conceptual content than most theories of conceptual combination would suggest.

Past research has found that the judged likelihood of properties of modified nouns (baby ducks have webbed feet) is reduced relative to unmodified nouns (ducks have webbed feet). Experiments 1-3 replicate the modification effect and demonstrate that this effect is obtained when participants make dichotomous decisions about the truth of such statements. In addition, measures of processing time indicate that properties are not immediately inherited during the composition process, but rather must be inferred. Experiments 2-3 included statements containing content-free modifiers (chonk ducks have webbed feet) to examine the extent to which the modification effect is influenced by the content of the modifier and knowledge about the combined concepts. Taken together, these results argue in favor of an inferential process that operates at the level of logical forms or structures, which are content-free, as well as operating on the content of the head noun category. In this framework, properties are inferred after a structural interpretation has been derived. (Contains 3 tables.)

Two experiments investigated the influence of sentential context on the relative ease of deriving a particular meaning for novel and familiar compounds. Experiment 1 determined which of two possible meanings was preferred for a set of novel phrases. Experiment 2 used both novel (e.g., "brain sponge") and familiar compounds (e.g., "bug spray"). The compounds appeared in a sentential context that supported either the dominant or subdominant meaning. Next, participants saw either the dominant or subdominant definition and indicated whether it was plausible. When the definition was consistent with the preceding sentence, the participants were more likely to consider the definition plausible regardless of whether the compound was novel or familiar, although this difference was more pronounced for novel phrases than for familiar phrases. In terms of response times, the effect of sentential context also depended on the degree of dominance. The data suggest that the interpretation of compounds is affected by at least two sources of information: sentential context and the relative dominance of the preferred meaning. (Contains 3 figures and 2 footnotes.)

The present experiments investigate the influence of modifier relation frequency and discourse context on the interpretation of novel noun-noun phrases (as measured by both the ease of interpretation and the types of interpretations that are provided). We assess whether people access knowledge about the relations with which the modifier is typically used when they encounter a combination in a discourse or whether this knowledge is used only when combinations are viewed outside of a discourse context. In addition, we examine whether a supportive discourse context can compensate for low modifier relation frequency. The data reveal a strong influence of modifier relation frequency when the combinations are interpreted out of context and when they are interpreted in context. Relation frequency also influenced the type of interpretation that is provided for the novel combination. Discourse context (supportive versus neutral) affected the ease with which a relation-based interpretation could be verified but had no effect on the type of interpretation produced.

Two experiments investigate whether relations that link the constituents of compounds during compound formation (e.g., "teapot" is formed by combining "tea" and "pot" using the relation "head noun FOR modifier") also influence the processing of familiar compounds. Although there is evidence for the use of such relations in forming compounds, whether such relations affect the processing of familiar compounds is unknown. The data show clear effects of repetition and relational priming for written words on both a sense-nonsense task and a lexical decision task. These results indicate that the relation linking the constituents of familiar compounds is important to their access and use.

We investigate how people extend properties from head nouns to compound words. Two conflicting principles seem to be important. Concepts license inference of properties: Knowing that birds fly allows an inference that songbirds fly. On the other hand, a subcategory term like songbirds is created only when that subcategory contrasts with the general category of birds. Participants rate the extent to which properties true of all, some, or no members of the head noun category are true of a subcategory denoted by an Opaque-Transparent compound. Both categorical inference and contrast affect these judgments: Properties true of the head are less true of the compound though still generally true, while those false of the head are more true of the compound, though still generally false. We discuss how modification effects with Opaque-Transparent compounds compare to both Transparent-Transparent compounds and novel combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies of noun-noun compound word processing have provided insight into the human capacity for conceptual combination (Gagné and Shoben Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23(1), 71 1997; Spalding, Gagné, Mullaly & Ji Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft, 17, 283-315 2010). These studies conclude that relational interpretations of compound words are proposed and appraised by the language system during online word recognition. However, little is known about how the capacity for creating new meanings from existing conceptual units develops within an individual mind. Though current theories imply that individual relational knowledge about the combinability of concepts develops as language experience accumulates, this hypothesis has not been previously tested experimentally. Here, we addressed this hypothesis in a task that assesses individual relational knowledge of English compound words. We report that greater experience with printed language shapes relational knowledge of compound words in two ways. Firstly, individuals with more experience with printed language were able to select a greater number of possible relational meanings for individual compound words. Secondly, individuals with greater experience with printed language were also more precise about which relational meaning was the most semantically plausible out of all possible meanings. Our results confirm that language experience affects an individual’s ability to use relational knowledge in order to combine conceptual units. Our findings offer further support for the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007), which states that lexical representations of words become simultaneously more flexible and precise as a result of repeated exposure to their orthographic forms in language usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply the concept of meaning predictability developed by Štekauer (2005, 2006, Štekauer, Diaz-Negrillo & Valera 2011) to the cognitive processing of modifier-noun phrases (e.g., wool basket) and determine whether meaning predictability is a viable psycholinguistic construct. We review and describe three sets of experiments that examined the role of meaning predictability. In the first set of experiments, we investigated how each of the two components of meaning predictability (i.e., prevalence and goodness) influenced the reaction times in a series of tasks that involved the interpretation of modifier-noun phrases. The results of these experiments showed that highly predictable meanings elicit faster responses in a sense/nonsense judgment task and in a meaning verification task. Furthermore, the results indicated that goodness and prevalence played different roles in the two tasks, which suggests that these two components of meaning predictability are best evaluated separately rather than as a single predictability rate measure. In the second set of experiments, we investigated the influence of sentential context on response times in a comprehension task and found that the influence of context depended on meaning dominance. Finally, in the third set of experiments we investigated whether the influence of meaning dominance extends to written production. We found that meaning dominance influences inter-key typing latencies but that this influence differs across the various positions in the phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The meaning of a modifier is influenced by the noun it modifies (Murphy, 1988). To determine how alternative senses of ambiguous adjectives are represented, we examined the processing of noun phrases. Ambiguous adjectives were paired with nouns such that the interpretation of the phrases used the dominant or subdominant sense (e.g., green conference). Participants verified interpretations (Experiments 1 and 2) or made sense-nonsense judgments (Experiments 3 and 4) to target phrases that were preceded by primes that were related to a single sense of the ambiguous modifier. Responses to targets were facilitated by consistent primes, and either unaffected (in the verification task) or facilitated (in the sense-nonsense task) by inconsistent primes. Furthermore, responses were influenced by the strength of both senses. Results support ambiguous word representation as a shared core-meaning with sense specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Although previous research has suggested that the processing of compound words involves the integration of the constituents, not much is known about what integration entails. Three experiments suggest that integration draws on both linguistic and conceptual knowledge about the constituents and the compound word; ease of processing (as reflected by RT in a sense/nonsense judgment task) is affected by the lemma frequency of the whole compound, as well as by each constituent’s positional family frequency. In addition, the data demonstrate that a compound’s constituents are not just conjointly activated but are bound together in a particular way; responses to a compound (e.g., snowball) were faster when the compound was preceded by a compound using the same relational structure (e.g., snowfort—MADE OF) than when preceded by a compound using a different relational structure (e.g., snowshovel—FOR). This finding suggests that the conceptual representation of a compound word might be based on a relational structure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The current experiments examine whether recent exposure to a modifier-noun phrase (e.g., unripe peaches) affects the representation of the head noun (e.g, peach). Experiment 1 demonstrates that a property true of the head noun (e.g, sweet) takes longer to verify when preceded by a phrase for which this property is not true (e.g., unripe peaches) than by a phrase for which the property remains true (e.g., orchard peaches). Experiment 2 replicates this finding and, in addition, demonstrates that properties that remain true of both prime phrases (e.g., fuzzy) are equally available during the processing of the head noun. These findings suggest that interpreting a modifier-noun phrase affects the head noun’s representation such that properties that are incompatible with the entire phrase temporarily become less available during subsequent processing of the head noun than do properties that remain compatible with the phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpreting a novel conceptual combination often involves selecting and using a relation to link the constituent concepts (e.g., interpreting a plastic pot as a pot made of plastic). In two experiments, we presented the head noun along with a property that, while always at least plausibly true of the head noun, may be more or less consistent with a particular relational interpretation of the combined concept. We then asked the participants to verify particular relational interpretations of the target combination. The results indicate that manipulating what is currently active about the head noun in this way affects the acceptability of different relational interpretations of the combined concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]