‘Interestingful’: How humans infer and learn novel compositional word meaning.
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2021-07-05
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en
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The present study examined how humans infer and learn novel compositional word meaning that is the result of derivational affixation, and whether and how the specific strategy they adopt has an influence on this process. This is examined through two behavioural experiments in which 40 Dutch participants were taught novel compositional words using an artificial language, after which it is tested whether they can generalise that knowledge to other novel compositional words. The target words consisted of a Dutch stem and a novel affix (e.g., klahond (ENG: kladog) meaning puppy). These are combined together with a sequential order rule (order-congruent) that is manipulated (order-incongruent and mismatched). The results showed that humans are able to infer and learn novel compositional word meaning by transferring previous acquired knowledge to novel contexts. Furthermore, humans are generally able to take the compositionality into account in the process of inferring and learning the meaning of novel words. Though, whether or not humans are aware of the sequential order rule of the compositional words has an influence on the exact way in which humans infer and learn novel compositional word meaning. By means of furthering our understanding on this topic, the next step is taken in bridging the gap between psycholinguistic and neurobiological accounts of language processing.
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