http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0367-7397
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ABSTRACT
The size and probability distribution of a word-form’s cohort of lexical competitors influence auditory processing and can be constrained by syntactic category information. This experiment employs noun/verb homonyms (e.g. “ache”) presented in syntactic context to clarify the mechanisms and representations involved in context-based cohort restriction. Implications for theories positing single versus multiple word-forms in cases of category ambiguity also arise. Using correlations between neural activity in auditory cortex, measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG), and standard and context-dependent cohort entropy and phoneme surprisal variables, we consider the possibility of cohort restriction on the basis of form or on the basis of category usage. Crucially, the form-conditional measure is consistent only with a single word-form view of category ambiguity. Our results show that noun/verb homonyms are derived from single category-neutral word-forms and that the cohort is restricted incrementally in context, by form and then by usage.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Laura Gwilliams for data collection and Christian Brodbeck for advice and assistance in implementing the spatiotemporal regression analysis described here. We also thank Tal Linzen for helpful discussion of our conditional measures.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Phoebe Gaston http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0367-7397
Notes
1. During the course of analysis we discovered that MNE-Python versions 0.9 (used originally) and 0.13 (current at the time of this writing) produced very slight discrepancies. All results reported in this paper were obtained with MNE-Python version 0.13 and eelbrain version 0.25.