INFLUENCE OF THEMATIC RELATIONS ON THE COMPREHENSION OF MODIFIER-NOUNCOMBINATIONS

To comprehend a nonpredicating combination involving a modifier (e.g., mountain) and a head noun (e.g., stream), one must specify a thematic relation (e.g., a stream in the mountains) that links the 2 constitue nt concepts. The authors investigated the influence of thematic relati ons on the comprehension of nonpredicating combinations. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated that people use information about what relations t he constituents typically instantiate during conceptual combination. M ore specifically, a combination is easier to interpret when it uses a frequent relation of the modifier than when it uses a less frequent re lation. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that these results are n ot an artifact of the individual component words. The authors propose a model of conceptual combination called the competition among relatio ns in nominals (CARIN) model in which ease of comprehension depends bo th on the frequency of the to-be-selected relation and on the frequenc y of the alternatives.