Where Words Get their Meaning: Cognitive processing and distributional modelling of word meaning in first and second language: 23 (Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research)

Bolognesi, Marianna

ISBN 10: 9027208018 / ISBN 13: 9789027208019

Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2020

About this Item

208 pages. 10.00x6.75x0.75 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # __9027208018

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Where Words Get their Meaning: Cognitive processing and distributional modelling of word meaning in first and second language: 23 (Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research)
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027208018
• ISBN 13: 9789027208019
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.53 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

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.