Klepousniotou: "The Processing of Lexical Ambiguity" (2001)

Following up on a related experiment by Lyn Frazier and Keith Rayner, this paper by Ekaterini Klepousniotou presents some evidence that not all types of ambiguity are equally hard to process.

Specifically, she reports a significant difference between, on one hand, the mass/count ambiguity of foodstuff words like potato, and, on the other hand, "deeper" ambiguities like that of fan ("enthusiast" vs. "air-blower").

Filed Down

These differences are found using a priming paradigm in which the subject must make a decision as to whether a string (e.g., prock) is a real English word or not. This task is posed immediately after the subject has read a sentence which primes one specific meaning of the term.

For instance, in the section of the experiment concerned with homonyms, you might for instance get one of the following prime–target pairs:

• The carpenter smoothed the wood. — file
• I have the papers in my office. — file

These two sentences differ as to whether they prime the less frequent or the more frequent meaning of the word file (i.e., "hand tool" or "dossier").

I am afraid Klepsousniotou's frequency calibration of the experiment was done on the basis of data from 1967. This may have had a quite important effect on the outcome of the experiment.

Somewhat surprisingly, Klepsousniotou reports that there was no significant difference between the priming of more frequent meanings and less frequent meanings (p. 213). This contradicts data from other experiments which were specifically designed to show that subordinate meanings are more difficult to access.

A Typology of Lemons

She does, however, find an on-average difference between ambiguities of the type above and ambiguities based around foodstuff metonymies (the result of what Langacker calls "grinding").

The following pair of prime–target pairs would thus both be quicker to process than the file examples above:

• I baked one for lunch. — potato
• I ate some mashed with gravy. — potato

And sure enough, the phrases a potato and some potato hardly seem to invoke different senses of the word potato. It would seem a bit weird to insist that the bare word, in the absence of any article, necessarily would have to be forced into the mold of a "mass noun" or a "count noun."

Mean reaction times for two ambiguity types and two target frequencies (cf. p. 213).

But anyway, now we have some empirical evidence that confirms this hypothesis: Subordinate meanings of strongly ambiguous words (e.g., spring = "source," punch = "drink," racket = "noise," etc.) are more difficult to settle on than mass readings of food words (e.g., some olive, some lemon, some rabbit, some cabbage, some apple, etc.).

Vendler: "Verbs and Times" (1957)

As with his paper on quantifiers, I read this paper in Linguistics in Philosophy (1967), but it first appeared in Philosophical Review in 1957. It's also floating around the internet here and there.

The Aspectual Garden

The paper is essentially a presentation of a taxonomy of verbal aspects.

Vendler makes a distinction between verbs that express states, and verbs that don't. Among those that don't, he distinguishes between those that have no clear end goals, and those that do.

Among processes with end goals, he distinguishes between those that consist only of a change of state, and those that consist both of an extended process and a change of state.

Here is his taxonomy with the names he uses:

• States are extended processes which involve no action and produce no change;
• Activities are extended processes which involve action but still produce no change;
• Accomplishments are extended processes which culminate in a change of state;
• Achievements are punctual events which consist of a change of state.

In my textbook on semantics, these classes are described by sorting them first according to the static/dynamic dimension, and then by plugging the dynamic verbs into the four cells of a table with a telic/atelic dimension and a durative/punctual dimension.

The result of this analysis is that Vendler's "achievements" are split into two classes: punctual atelic semelfactives and punctual telic achievements. Activities would then be the durative atelic processes, and accomplishments would be the durative telic ones. All static verbs are still lumped together in one big class called states.

This alternative model is taken from Carlota Smith's The Parameter of Aspect (first edition, 1991).

Diagnostics for the Classes

Vendler's taxonomy involves three different dimensions of difference. He himself proposes a number of tests that can distinguish the two poles of each dimension.

The Progressive Test

The easiest distinction to make is the one between static verbs and everything else. As Vendler notes, only dynamic verbs accept progressive forms (p. 99), so one can't say things like

• *I am resembling …
• *I am owning …
• *I am resenting …

For the same reason, one can also not answer the question

• What are you doing?

with a static sentence.

The Completion Time Test

Since telic processes have an implied end state, it makes sense to ask how long such a process took (to accomplish). For atelic processes, this frequently makes less sense (p. 100–101):

• I takes me forever to write an email. (durative, telic)
• *It took me all afternoon to sit in my chair. (durative, atelic)
• It took the bomb an hour to explode. (punctual, telic)
• ?I took me an hour to cough. (punctual, atelic)

However, this test is not very reliable, since one can also construe the atelic verb as designating a desired end state of some other process. For instance, if I want to sneeze but can't, the sentence it takes me a long time to sneeze sound less weird.

A bit of googling shows that people occasionally do write things like that. The verb sleep also provides a good problematic example.

The Temporal Extension Test

Reversely, one can ask for the amount of time spent on an atelic process, but not a telic one:

• *I wrote an email for an hour. (durative, telic)
• I sat in my chair all afternoon. (durative, atelic)
• *The bomb exploded for an hour. (punctual, telic)
• I coughed for an hour. (punctual, atelic)

However, this test also rules out atelic processes that can not easily be "ground" into repeated actions:

• *I took a breath for an hour. (punctual, atelic)
• ?I sneezed a single time for an hour. (punctual, atelic)
• *He died throughout 1918. (punctual, atelic)

The test can thus only reliably be used to distinguish between telic and atelic processes in the durative case. In the punctual, things might go wrong.

The Homogeneity Test

Although durative telic processes have a completion time, this completion time cannot be interpreted as a temporal extension. If it took me an hour to reach the summit, that doesn't mean that I was engaged in an activity called "reaching the summit" in that whole period (p. 104).

This difference can also be exploited in a test:

I wrote my first draft between 9 and 12                 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  (invalid?)

I wrote my first draft between 10 and 11.                

I ran aimlessly around between 9 and 12             

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  (valid)

I ran aimlessly around between 10 and 11.            

I realized how wrong I was between 9 and 12                 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  (invalid)

I realized how wrong I was between 10 and 11.                

I coughed loudly between 9 and 12              

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  (valid)

I coughed loudly between 10 and 11.             

However, this test isn't perfect either. While it does select precisely the atelic processes in these cases, the test might actually reject paradigmatically telic processes like write a letter or draw a circle. It is not always clear that the time interval pertains to the end point of the process rather than the process as a whole.

The Twice Test

Vendler doesn't mention this, but it should be mentioned that although we can almost always "grind" punctual processes into durative ones, we can counteract this tendency by insisting one counting the events in questions:

• I blinked twice.
• I blinked for an hour.
• ?I blinked twice for an hour.

To see to what extent this test is able to separate durative from punctual verbs, we can try to plug sleep into the same frame:

• I slept twice.
• I slept for an hour.
• I slept twice for an hour.

Is this last sentence acceptable? If so, we have a working diagnostic; if not, we have a problem.

The Spot Test

Although punctual processes can almost always be "ground" into durative ones, it is difficult for a punctual verb to have a durative complement. Concretely, Vendler notes the difference (p. 114):

• I saw him run.
• I saw him cross the street.
• *I spotted him run.
• *I spotted him cross the street.

This observation, however, does not sit easily with the fact that you can realize how wrong you were or, even worse, that you can realize how wrong you always were.