Where Words Get their Meaning

Cognitive processing and distributional modelling of word meaning in first and second language

Author
ORCID logoMarianna Bolognesi | University of Bologna
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027208019 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027260420 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00
 
Google Play logo
Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning?
This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts.
By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Littlemore, Jeannette, Marianna Bolognesi, Nina Julich Warpakowski, Chung-hong Danny Leung & Paula Perez Sobrino
2023. Metaphor, Metonymy, the Body and the Environment, DOI logo
Tjuka, Annika, Robert Forkel & Johann-Mattis List
2023. Curating and extending data for language comparison in Concepticon and NoRaRe. Open Research Europe 2  pp. 141 ff. DOI logo
Tjuka, Annika, Robert Forkel & Johann-Mattis List
2023. Curating and extending data for language comparison in Concepticon and NoRaRe. Open Research Europe 2  pp. 141 ff. DOI logo

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Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFDM: Bilingualism & multilingualism

Main BISAC Subject

LAN016000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2020040110 | Marc record