Similarity, alignment, and conceptual combination: Comment on Estes and Glucksberg

In their paper "Interactive Property Attribution in Concept Combination, "E stes and Glucksberg (2000) suggest an alternative to the alignment view of property interpretation-one based on salience and relevance of features. I suggest that alignment as well as feature salience and relevance are crucia l to property interpretation. In making their claims, Estes and Glucksberg also assume that similarity has inverse effects on two important ways of in terpreting combinations (i.e., property and relation interpretations). I sh ow that this assumption does not generally hold and provide an alternative explanation for their results (one based on the plausibility of relation in terpretations).