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Vector-Space Models of Semantic Representation From a Cognitive Perspective
Models that represent meaning as high-dimensional numerical vectors—such as latent semantic analysis (LSA), hyperspace analogue to language (HAL), bound encoding of the aggregate language environment (BEAGLE), topic models, global vectors (GloVe), and word2vec—have been introduced as extremely powerful machine-learning proxies for human semantic representations and have seen an explosive rise in popularity over the past 2 decades. However, despite their considerable advancements and spread in the cognitive sciences, one can observe problems associated with the adequate presentation and understanding of some of their features. Indeed, when these models are examined from a cognitive perspective, a number of unfounded arguments tend to appear in the psychological literature. In this article, we review the most common of these arguments and discuss (a) what exactly these models represent at the implementational level and their plausibility as a cognitive theory, (b) how they deal with various aspects of meaning such as polysemy or compositionality, and (c) how they relate to the debate on embodied and grounded cognition. We identify common misconceptions that arise as a result of incomplete descriptions, outdated arguments, and unclear distinctions between theory and implementation of the models. We clarify and amend these points to provide a theoretical basis for future research and discussions on vector models of semantic representation.
Journal Article
On The Gradability of Metaphor
My purpose in this paper is to demonstrate that metaphor should be viewed as a gradable conceptual phenomenon, and to elucidate further the notion of minimal metaphoric mapping between subordinate level concepts dominated by the same basic level category, which I called “syntaphor” in my previous studies. Since the concepts involved in metaphor represent different conceptual distances, metaphor appears to be gradable, starting from the lowest level of syntaphors through the level of close metaphors, to the level of distant and maximally distant metaphors, which have been the focus of interest in most cognitive studies of metaphor so far. In Section 1 I describe briefly an approach to metaphor from the point of view of the theory of categorization, whereby metaphor is defined in terms of mappings between concepts rather than domains. Section 2 presents the notion and four degrees of conceptual distance between the concepts involved in metaphor based on the subordinate, basic and superordinate levels of categorization. In Section 3 four kinds of metaphor are distinguished depending on three degrees of conceptual distance between the source and the target concepts: distant metaphors, close metaphors and syntaphors. The role of syntaphors is further discussed in polysemy and novel metaphors. Some of the crucial aspects of syntaphors are highlighted when they are compared with image metaphors. The most important implications of the study for the theory of metaphor are presented in Conclusions.
Journal Article
On the Role of Source and Target Words’ Meanings in Metaphorical Conceptualizations
The paper argues that metaphorical expressions do more than just instantiate conceptual metaphors. The main aim is to emphasize the role source and target words’ meanings play in construing generic-level metaphors. The latter are taken to act as superordinate categories for other metaphors, occurring at various levels of schematicity. Identification of lower-level metaphors takes into account source words’ metaphorical senses, not the central meanings of the categories they represent. This method brings the issue of source words’ polysemy into play, and hence helps explain why metaphorical expressions relating to the same generic-level metaphor may activate different lower-level metaphors, which carry different metaphorical meanings.
Journal Article
Polysemy Deciphering Network for Robust Human–Object Interaction Detection
Human–Object Interaction (HOI) detection is important to human-centric scene understanding tasks. Existing works tend to assume that the same verb has similar visual characteristics in different HOI categories, an approach that ignores the diverse semantic meanings of the verb. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a novel Polysemy Deciphering Network (PD-Net) that decodes the visual polysemy of verbs for HOI detection in three distinct ways. First, we refine features for HOI detection to be polysemy-aware through the use of two novel modules: namely, Language Prior-guided Channel Attention (LPCA) and Language Prior-based Feature Augmentation (LPFA). LPCA highlights important elements in human and object appearance features for each HOI category to be identified; moreover, LPFA augments human pose and spatial features for HOI detection using language priors, enabling the verb classifiers to receive language hints that reduce intra-class variation for the same verb. Second, we introduce a novel Polysemy-Aware Modal Fusion module, which guides PD-Net to make decisions based on feature types deemed more important according to the language priors. Third, we propose to relieve the verb polysemy problem through sharing verb classifiers for semantically similar HOI categories. Furthermore, to expedite research on the verb polysemy problem, we build a new benchmark dataset named HOI-VerbPolysemy (HOI-VP), which includes common verbs (predicates) that have diverse semantic meanings in the real world. Finally, through deciphering the visual polysemy of verbs, our approach is demonstrated to outperform state-of-the-art methods by significant margins on the HICO-DET, V-COCO, and HOI-VP databases. Code and data in this paper are available at https://github.com/MuchHair/PD-Net.
Journal Article
Stereotypical Metaphor: A Missing Piece in Conceptual Metaphor Theory
The paper argues for a new kind of metaphors referred to as
. They are assumed to be stereotype-based metaphors, in that they arise from stereotypical thoughts speakers within a speech community attach to concepts. They are shown to be instrumental in motivating metaphorical extension of a variety of lexical items. Two case studies are conducted to adduce evidence in support of their descriptive adequacy.
Journal Article
L2 English Speakers’ Ability to Process Novel Denominal Verbs: The Role of Proficiency and Language Experience
As if learning a second language (L2) was not challenging enough, languages continue to innovate and introduce new words. One source of lexical innovation can be the use of existing nouns as novel verbs (e.g., ‘to porch the newspaper’), which are termed denominal verbs. In a psycholinguistic study, we investigate whether L2 English speakers (N = 41) show lower acceptability judgments and higher processing effort when reading such novel denominal verbs, and whether this is influenced by their L2 proficiency or the diversity of their language experience. The results suggest that the L2 speakers are sensitive to the novel verbs, showing both reading time and judgment effects. No effects of language experience were attested, but the more proficient the speakers were, the more sensitivity they showed to the novel verbs in their judgments. This suggests that even relatively proficient L2 English speakers are still developing their flexible use of the L2, particularly when it comes to lexical innovation.
Journal Article
Algorithms in the historical emergence of word senses
Human language relies on a finite lexicon to express a potentially infinite set of ideas. A key result of this tension is that words acquire novel senses over time. However, the cognitive processes that underlie the historical emergence of new word senses are poorly understood. Here, we present a computational framework that formalizes competing views of how new senses of a word might emerge by attaching to existing senses of the word. We test the ability of the models to predict the temporal order in which the senses of individual words have emerged, using an historical lexicon of English spanning the past millennium. Our findings suggest that word senses emerge in predictable ways, following an historical path that reflects cognitive efficiency, predominantly through a process of nearest-neighbor chaining. Our work contributes a formal account of the generative processes that underlie lexical evolution.
Journal Article
Polysemes and Synonyms (wujūh and naẓāᵓir) in Hanbali Legal Terminology: An Inductive Analysis of Kashshāf al-Qināᶜ
Objectives: This research contributes to the Hanbali legal corpus an expert study of the methodology of “wujūh and naẓāᵓir” (the lexical classification of polysemous and synonymous expressions). It identifies the various meanings of specific terms within this tradition and investigates the underlying reasons for their differences. Methodology: The study pursues an inductive approach that traces the occurrences of polysemous statements in the Hanbali legal tradition, with a particular focus on al-Bahūtī’s book Kashshāf al-qināᶜ ᶜan matn al-iqnāᶜ. Additionally, it employs an analytical approach to present, compare, and critically examine the different meanings of these statements while explaining the reasons behind their variations. Findings: The research highlights the significance of the wujūh and naẓāᵓir typology in legal texts, and its role in facilitating comprehension and enhancing accessibility for scholars and practitioners. It identifies and classifies statements with multiple meanings, including those uniquely engaged and clarified by al-Bahūtī and those whose meanings can only be discerned through contextual analysis within the same work. Also, this study attributes the variation in meaning to four principal factors. Originality: This research represents the first dedicated study to systematically examine polysemous statements within the Hanbali legal tradition and explore the causes of their semantic multiplicity. It is expected to stimulate further scholarly engagement with legal terminology in other jurisprudential works.
Journal Article
The Translation of Diminutives in Miron Białoszewski’s “A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising.” A Cognitive Analysis
In this paper we investigate the diminutives in Miron Białoszewski’s
and how they are rendered in the English translation by Madeline G. Levine –
. We adopt the semantic account of the category of the diminutive proposed by John Taylor (1989), which treats meanings of the diminutive as a radial network of interrelated senses. In
…, the diminutive seems to be used most commonly in the descriptions of highly stressful and dangerous events, possibly to make those experiences less frightening (the meaning of low intensity and low quality) and more manageable (the literal meaning of smallness). At times it seems to help re-interpret a bad experience, or rather to mitigate the subjectively experienced impact of a negative event. The proliferation of diminutives is made possible by the productivity of the morphology of the Polish language and by Białoszewski’s linguistic creativity. In the English version, the translator employs compensatory strategies to address linguistic nuances, but often omits the diminutive altogether. This work aims to investigate the effect the diminutive has on the construal of the analysed texts and to highlight the problems it poses for translation from Polish to English.
Journal Article