Eponymous verb phrases and ambiguity resolution

To understand eponymous verb phrases such as "do a John Travolta," readers cannot merely select a sense out of a mental lexicon (sense selection). The y must create new senses (sense creation) by retrieving salient information from memory. We conducted two experiments to test the hypothesis that thes e processes of memory retrieval parallel those used for ordinary lexical am biguities. To prepare for Experiment 1, we gathered readers' interpretation s of eponymous verb phrases like "do a John Travolta" to establish dominant and subordinate interpretations. We then wrote story contexts that biased comprehension toward one or the other interpretation. In Experiment 1, para phrase judgment times were used to demonstrate that dominant meanings are p rivileged in the sense that they are accessible even when the story creates a subordinate bias. In Experiment 2, this privilege faded somewhat when th ere was a delay before the paraphrase judgment. We discuss the results with respect to the distinction between sense selection and sense creation.