Abstract
The present paper reports two experimental studies on cognitive processing of adjective-noun combinations in which lexical sematic representations and processes are modeled according to the Generative Lexicon theory (Pustejovsky J. The generative lexicon. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995). The focus of these studies is on investigating the effects of the factors adjectival formal type, and compatibility of concepts in combinations on computational complexity and on the content of semantic interpretation of adjective-noun combinations. Three types of adjective-noun combinations were distinguished namely, intersective (e.g., yellow car), subsective compatible (e.g., interesting car), and subsective incompatible (e.g., fast car). In Experiment 1, the hypothesis is tested that semantic interpretation of the three types of combinations varies in terms of computational complexity with intersective combinations being the simplest and the two subsective types being progressively more complex. The analysis of the results obtained in Experiment 1 showed a significant effect of the factor adjectival formal type in predicted direction. Intersective combinations were processed significantly faster (M_(I) = 794 ms) than the two subsective types (M_(SC) = 851 ms, and M_(SI) = 855 ms, respectively). In Experiment 2, written paraphrases for the three types of combinations were compared. The analysis of the results showed that the proportion of responses congruent with the combination type was highest for the intersective and the subsective incompatible combinations (approximately 75%), and lowest for the subsective compatible ones (39%). The low congruence in this category of combinations is possibly due to a high level of adjectival semantic underspecification. Generally, the findings obtained in the two experiments support the proposed model of semantic interpretation of adjective-noun combinations in which generative, type-driven meaning computation processes are emphasized.
