People often create novel lexical expressions to efficiently communicate their
thoughts to others. Noun-noun phrases, also known as conceptual
combinations, serve as an example of these novel expressions. Most of the
research on conceptual combination has focused on structural features of the
phrases. However, other research has demonstrated that discourse context can
also influence how these phrases are interpreted. Across two experiments, we
demonstrate that discourse context has a greater influence on how people
interpret these combinations than does a structural level manipulation. We also
examine the strength of this contextually based-effect over a series of time
delays. The findings from this study indicate that, while structural features of a
given conceptual combination influence how that combination is interpreted, the
discourse surrounding the novel combination plays a more influential role in the
resulting interpretation. The influence of context is more pronounced than has
been suggested in much of the research on conceptual combination.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4143 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Sappington, Randy Earl |
| Contributors | Bortfeld, Heather |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 414964 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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