The Iteration of Concept Combination in Sense Generation

We report work in progress on the computational modelling of a theory of concepts and concept combination. The sense generation approach to concepts provides a perspicuous way of treating a range of recalcitrant concept combinations: privative combinations (e.g., fake gun, stone lion, apparent friend). We argue that a proper treatment of concept combination must respect important syntactic constraints on the combination process, the simplest being the priority of syntactic modifier over the head in case of conflicts. We present a model of privative concept combinations based on the sense generation approach. The model was developed using COGENT, an object-oriented modelling environment designed to simplify and clarify the implementation process by minimising the ‘distance’ between the box/arrow ‘language’ of psychological theorising and the theory’s implementation. In addition to simple privatives (i.e., ones with a single modifier, like fake gun) the model also handles iterated, or complex, privative combinations (i.e., ones with more than one modifier, like fake stone lion), and reflects their associated modification ambiguities. We suggest that the success of this model reflects both the utility of COGENT as a modelling framework and the adequacy of sense generation as a theory of concept combination.