Complex words in context

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Harald Baayen
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527671319

The Discriminative Lexicon Model (DLM, Baayen et al., 2019; Chuang & Baayen, 2021) implements a computational theory of the mental lexicon. This theory has been developed for words considered by themselves, without taking any context into account. However, how words are spoken, and what they mean, depends on the context in which they are used. For instance, English cut can denote actions car- ried out with chainsaws, knives, or scissors, actions for which Dutch and Mandarin use three different verbs. English cut displays a wide range of other meanings, across derivations (cutter, a type of ship), compounds (cutworm, a moth larva), lexicalized expressions (cut across), and idioms (to cut classes). Elman (2009) and Jackendoff & Audring (2020) have pointed out that our lexical knowledge does not consist of just simple and complex words, but of tens of thousands of multi-word expressions. Furthermore, what in one language is expressed with a single morphologically complex word, may require a phrase in other languages. Central to the present project proposal is the hypothesis that the meanings of small utterances can be represented as points in a high-dimensional lexical/syntactic/pragmatic space. Such a space, which integrates distributional semantics with morphology and simple syntax, requires the development of algorithms for the conceptualization not only of inflectional features such as number or tense, but also of syntactic roles such as agent and patient, and pragmatic functions such as honorifics (as found in Korean and Japanese). Crucially, the algorithms have to be set up in such a way that entities with different syntactic or pragmatic functions are properly distinguished, while maintaining lexical similarities. Extending the DLM from isolated words to words in context not only poses challenges for the way in which form and lexical meaning are to be represented within the DLM formalization of usage-based morphology, but also addresses fundamental questions in linguistic theory about the relation between form and meaning. The enhanced model that is the central deliverable of this project will be applied to a wide range of phenomena that are currently out of reach of the word-based DLM, such as liaison, external sandhi, periphrasis in morphological paradigms, compound interpretation, the interpretation of case inflection, fixed phrases and idioms, the context-dependence of lexical meaning and the morphology of honorifics. Importantly, because the DLM incorporates distributional semantics into morphological theory, it becomes possible to study in detail how subtle differences in meaning modulate speech production and auditory comprehension.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants