Lexical and distributional influences on word association response generation
This thesis is the result of an attempt to investigate the determinants of word association responses. The aim of this work was to identify those properties of words - their frequency, grammatical class, and textual distribution, for example - which influence the generation of word association responses, and to align these effects with wider sycholinguistic views of the mental lexicon. The experimental work in the early chapters focuses on grammatical influences on wordassociation. In particular, it is demonstrated that both grammatical class and verb transitivity influence the type of response most likely to be selected by participants. The immediately following chapters ask why this would be so. The analysis of several models of word association suggests that the development of a clearer understanding of the way in which a word's textual distribution impacts upon associative response patterns may be an important stepping stone towards a coherent model of associative response generation. In the later part of the thesis, a series of novel experiments is conducted comparing word association response patterns with corpus-derived data. This work in turn lays the foundation for the development of a new usage-based
Thwaites, Peter
P Philology. Linguistics
Lexical and distributional influences on word association response generation. This thesis is the result of an attempt to investigate the determinants of word association responses. The aim of this work was to identify those properties of words - their frequency, grammatical class, and textual distribution, for example - which influence the generation of word association responses, and to align these effects with wider sycholinguistic views of the mental lexicon. The experimental work in the early chapters focuses on grammatical influences on wordassociation. In particular, it is demonstrated that both grammatical class and verb transitivity influence the type of response most likely to be selected by participants. The immediately following chapters ask why this would be so. The analysis of several models of word association suggests that the development of a clearer understanding of the way in which a word's textual distribution impacts upon associative response patterns may be an important stepping stone towards a coherent model of associative response generation. In the later part of the thesis, a series of novel experiments is conducted comparing word association response patterns with corpus-derived data. This work in turn lays the foundation for the development of a new usage-based
lexical distributional influence word_association response generation attempt_investigate determinant word_association response aim_work identify property word_frequency grammatical class textual distribution example influence generation word_association response align effect wider view mental_lexicon experimental_work early focus grammatical influence particular demonstrated grammatical class verb transitivity influence type response likely select participant immediately_follow ask would analysis several model word_association suggest development clearer way word textual distribution impact_upon associative response pattern may important step stone towards coherent_model associative response generation later part series novel conduct compare word_association response pattern corpus derived data work turn lay_foundation development new usage_based