Noun/verb dissociations in the literature defy interpretation due to the confound between lexical category and semantic meaning; nouns and verbs typically describe concrete objects and actions. Abstract words, pertaining to neither, are a critical test case: dissociations along lexical-grammatical lines would support models purporting lexical category as the principle governing brain organisati...

This paper introduces an approach to modeling the interpretation of semantically underspecified logical metonymies, such as John began the book. A distinctive feature of the theory presented is its emphasis on accounting for their behavior in discoursecontexts. The approach dependson the definition of a pragmatic component which interacts in the appropriate manner with lexicosyntactic informati...

We exploited the properties of VP-ellipsis constructions containing inherently reflexive and inalienable possession verbs that severely constrained final interpretation (e.g., "The policeman perjured himself, and the fireman did too…"). Using the cross-modal lexical priming task, we found that listeners reactivated the subject NP from the first clause at the elided position in the second clause...

This contribution investigates the interactions between the (mental) lexicon and pragmatics. It aims to give an overview about pragmatic phenomena that are connected with the semantic underspecification of lexical items. Cases in point are the pragmatics of adjectives, effects of negative strengthening, systematic polysemy, the distribution of lexical and productive causatives, blocking phenome...

the present study aims at investigating the effect of different levels of lexical collocational density on efl learners’ reading comprehension. eighty sophomore students with different levels of proficiency studying at  zand institute of higher education in shiraz, iran were chosen from among eighty five learners based on their score distribution on a reduced toefl test constructed by education...

Two hypotheses concerning the nature of lexical access, the exhaustive access and the terminating ordered search hypotheses, were examined in two separate studies using a cross modal lexical priming task. In this task, subjects listened to sentences that were biased toward either the primary interpretation (a meaning occurring 75% or more of the time) or a secondary interpretation (a meaning oc...