TY - JOUR
T1 - Constructing Meaning
T2 - The Role of Affordances and Grammatical Constructions in Sentence Comprehension
AU - Kaschak, Michael P.
AU - Glenberg, Arthur M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This article is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship to the first author and by a grant from the University of Wisconsin Graduate School to the second author. The authors thank David Robertson, Joshua Alexander, and Jareb Courtney for help in developing the materials for these experiments and running participants. Thanks also to Jenny Saffran, Charles Snowdon, and Gabriella Vigliocco for helpful discussions and suggestions on the work presented here. We are grateful for the comments of Michael Spivey and two anonymous reviewers which helped to improve this article. The materials used in the experiments reported here (but not included in the appendices) can be found at the following website: http://psych.wisc.edu/glenberg/jml_k&g.html.
PY - 2000/10
Y1 - 2000/10
N2 - The Indexical Hypothesis describes how sentences become meaningful through grounding their interpretation in action. We develop support for the hypothesis by examining how people understand innovative denominal verbs, that is, verbs made from nouns and first encountered by participants within the experiment (e.g., to crutch). Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that different syntactic constructions provide scenes or goals that influence the meaning created for the innovative verbs. Experiment 3 used reading time to demonstrate that people also consider possible interactions with the objects underlying the verbs (i.e., the affordances of the objects) when creating meaning. Experiment 4 used a property verification procedure to demonstrate that the affordances derived from the objects depend on the situation-specific actions needed to complete the goal specified by the syntactic construction. Thus the evidence supports a specific type of interaction between syntax and semantics that leads to understanding: The syntax specifies a general scene, and the affordances of objects are used to specify the scene in detail sufficient to take action.
AB - The Indexical Hypothesis describes how sentences become meaningful through grounding their interpretation in action. We develop support for the hypothesis by examining how people understand innovative denominal verbs, that is, verbs made from nouns and first encountered by participants within the experiment (e.g., to crutch). Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that different syntactic constructions provide scenes or goals that influence the meaning created for the innovative verbs. Experiment 3 used reading time to demonstrate that people also consider possible interactions with the objects underlying the verbs (i.e., the affordances of the objects) when creating meaning. Experiment 4 used a property verification procedure to demonstrate that the affordances derived from the objects depend on the situation-specific actions needed to complete the goal specified by the syntactic construction. Thus the evidence supports a specific type of interaction between syntax and semantics that leads to understanding: The syntax specifies a general scene, and the affordances of objects are used to specify the scene in detail sufficient to take action.
KW - Embodied cognition; construction grammar; sentence comprehension; denominal verbs
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0000796179&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1006/jmla.2000.2705
DO - 10.1006/jmla.2000.2705
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0000796179
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 43
SP - 508
EP - 529
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 3
ER -