SOURCES OF SENTENCE CONSTRAINT ON LEXICAL AMBIGUITY RESOLUTION

Results from a series of naming experiments demonstrated that major le xical categories of simple sentences can provide sources of constraint on the interpretation of ambiguous words (homonyms). Manipulation of verb (Experiment 1) or subject noun (Experiment 2) specificity produce d contexts that were empirically rated as being strongly biased or amb iguous. Priming was demonstrated for target words related to both sens es of a homonym following ambiguous sentences, but only contextually a ppropriate target words were primed following strongly biased dominant or subordinate sentences. Experiment 3 showed an increase in the magn itude of priming when multiple constraints on activation converged. Ex periments 4 and 5 eliminated combinatorial intralexical priming as an alternative explanation. Instead, it was demonstrated that each constr aint was influential only insofar as it contributed to the overall sem antic representation of the sentence. When the multiple sources of con straint were retained but the sentence-level representation was change d (Experiment 4) or eliminated (Experiment 5), the results of Experime nts 1, 2, and 3 and were not replicated. Experiment 6 examined the iss ue of homonym exposure duration by using an 80-msec stimulus onset asy nchrony. The results replicated the previous experiments. The overall evidence indicates that a sentence context can be made strongly and im mediately constraining by the inclusion of specific fillers for salien t lexical categories. The results are discussed within a constraint-ba sed, context-sensitive model of lexical ambiguity resolution.