In this thesis we present TroFi, a system for separating literal and nonliteral usages of verbs through unsupervised statistical word-sense disambiguation and clustering techniques. TroFi distinguishes itself by redefining the types of nonliteral language handled and by depending purely on sentential context rather than selectional constraint violations and paths in semantic hierarchies. TroFi ...

This work addresses the problem of providing explanation capabilities to an argumentation system. Explanation in defeasible argumentation is an important, and yet undeveloped field in the area. Therefore, we move in this direction by defining a concrete argument system with explanation facilities. We consider the structures that provide information on the warrant status of a literal. Our focus ...

Recent event related brain potential (ERP) results show that figurative interpretations of proverbial phrases (e.g., lightning never strikes the same place twice) elicit sustained slow cortical potentials that are more negative over the front of the head than for literal interpretations of the same phrases (Ferretti, Schwint, & Katz, under review). We extend this research by examining the influ...

It is well-know that the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) is activated by mental simulation triggered by visual or linguistic stimuli (Glenberg and Kaschak 2002 and many others). However, no study has compared the extent of ACE activated by literal and figurative understanding of honorific Japanese verbs. Two experiments, consisting of 59 Japanese university students was conducted usi...

Idioms are sometimes viewed as unitized phrases with interpretations that are independent of the literal meanings of their individual words. In three experiments, the nature of idiom representation was explored with a speech-error elicitation task. In the task, speakers briefly viewed paired idioms. After a short delay they were probed to produce one of the two idioms, and their production late...

We used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to assess whether reading literal, non-literal (i.e., metaphorical, idiomatic) and fictive motion sentences modulates the activity of the motor system. Sentences were divided into three segments visually presented one at a time: the noun phrase, the verb and the final part of the sentence. Single pulse-TMS was delivered at the end of the sentence ...

The idea that the conceptual system draws on sensory and motor systems has received considerable experimental support in recent years. Whether the tight coupling between sensory-motor and conceptual systems is modulated by factors such as context or task demands is a matter of controversy. Here, we tested the context sensitivity of this coupling by using action verbs in three different types of...

Non-compositional multiword expressions (MWEs) still pose serious issues for a variety of natural language processing tasks and their ubiquity makes it impossible to get around methods which automatically identify these kind of MWEs. The method presented in this paper was inspired by Sporleder and Li (2009) and is able to discriminate between the literal and non-literal use of an MWE in an unsu...

Cognitive linguists suggest that understanding metaphors requires activation of conceptual mappings between the involved concepts. We tested whether mappings are indeed in use during metaphor comprehension, and what mapping means as a cognitive process with Event-Related Potentials. Participants read literal, conventional metaphorical, novel metaphorical, and anomalous target sentences preceded...

This paper describes on-going work in the analysis of motion dynamics in pen-based interaction. The overall goal is the creation of a model of user motion in pen gestures where constraint and curvature vary over the length of the path. In particular, speed/curvature models of motion are used to analyze pen trajectories and infer target constraints obeyed by a user performing selection gestures....