Word associations to homographs

JOURNAL OF VERBAL LEARNING AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR9, 444-449 (1970)

Word Associations to Homographs DONALD H . KAUSLER AND SYLVIA F . KOLLASCH l

Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri 63103

Word associations to 40 homographic stimuli were scored in terms of the semantic features serving as S's apparent functional stimulus, and hierarchies related to the separate sets of features of homographs were determined. For most homographs the dominant meaning in the associativehierarchy was the more frequently occurring meaning in semantic counts, a finding in agreement with a spew-likeprinciple of perceivinghomographic stimuli. A homograph is a word which has two or more distinct meanings, each of which has its own etymology. Homographs are usually homophones as well (e.g., bat, date, mine), although there are instances in which a differential pronunciation accompanies the variation in meaning (e.g., lead, sow, wind). Homographs function semantically as if they have been encoded and stored as two (or more) distinct words, each having its own unique set of semantic features (Katz & Fodor, 1963). As such, homographs represent a useful population of words for testing hypotheses related to the priming of meaning and the subsequent effect of priming on such activities as word association, clustering during free recall, false recognition, and so on. Recent studies by Cramer (1968) and Kausler and Kamichoff (1970) attest to the heuristic value of homographs in this capacity. In addition, homographs offer a valuable research tool for testing hypotheses relating psychopathology to verbal behavior (e.g., Benjamin & Watt, 1969). Other than semantic word counts (e.g., Lorge & Thorndike, 1938), there has been little research directed toward the characteristics of homographs per se. Of special interest We wish to acknowledge the aid of Joan T. Erber, Bayla M. Myer, and Gayle A. Olson in serving as judges. We have a limited supply of the complete normative data. A copy may be obtained by writing to the senior author.

is the nature of word associations to homographic stimuli, in that these associations provide an effective source material for selecting priming words and for analyzing the differential salience of a given homograph's meanings. Many associations may be viewed as response words which share a large number of features, and which offer a minimal feature contrast, with the stimulus words (McNeill, 1966). Thus, for a single S the association to a given homograph is likely to reflect the particular meaning, or set of features, perceived at the moment of responding, and for a group of Ss the associations to that homograph should be distributed in proportion to the frequencies with which the separate meanings are perceived. The best available predictor of the differential frequencies for the separate meanings is the information provided by semantic counts. A spew-like principle (Underwood & Schulz, 1960) leads to the prediction that the more frequently occurring meaning will also be the more frequently perceived meaning in the elicitation of word associations. Although normative studies on word association contain a scattering of homographic stimulus words (e.g., Bousfield, Cohen, Whitmarsh, & Kincaid, 1961), their concentration is insufficient to permit a systematic analysis of the distributions of associations to distinct meanings. The primary purpose of this study is to provide this kind of systematic analysis. In addition, the study makes normative data avail-

444

WORD ASSOCIATIONS TO HOMOGRAPHS

able for a relatively large collection o f h o m o g r a p h i c stimuli.

445

psychology classes at St. Louis University, serving as Ss. An additional 50 men and 50 women, also students in general psychology classes, served as Ss for the sentence construction test.

METHOD

Homographs Word associations were collected for a total of 40 homographs. The reference source was the Thorndike Barnhart Handy Dictionary, a source which'lists meanings of homographs in order of frequency of occurrence in the Lorge-Thorndike (1938) semantic count. The order listed in this source overlaps completely with that given in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1967). The homographs were selected so as to include a range of Thorndike-Lorge (1944) values (four per million to AA), a range of word lengths (three to seven letters), and, hopefully, a range of fractionation between component meanings (near equality of separate meanings to high dominance for one meaning). The homographs and their component meanings are given in Table 1.

Procedure The word associations were collected by means of a group test that followed exactly the procedure of Palermo and Jenkins (1964). Two different forms (A and B) of the test were employed. Form A contained 11 homographs plus 29 filler words (nonhomographic words selected from the Palermo-Jenkins stimulus words), and Form B contained 29 different homographs plus 21 filler words. Two different random orders of words were used in preparing booklets for each form. The associations to each homographic stimulus were scored independently by five judges, the two Es and three graduate students in human learning. The judge's task was to interpret the meaning of the homograph that served as S's functional stimulus for each association and to assign a meaning designation (i.e., first or second meaning as listed in the reference source) for each association. For validity purposes a group sentence construction test was administered to a separate group of Ss. The test contained 20 words, the 11 homographs of Form A plus 9 filler words. The S's task was to write a sentence for each word that would contain that word in any capacity. Each sentence containing a homograph was then scored by the five judges in terms of the meaning designation implied by the sentence.

Subjects For each form of the word association test there were 100 men and 100 women, students in general

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A n associate was considered related to a given m e a n i n g o f a h o m o g r a p h only if there was c o m p l e t e a g r e e m e n t a m o n g the five judges. A l l other associates were scored as being a m b i g u o u s . Table 1 gives the percentages o f m e n a n d w o m e n who r e s p o n d e d to the separate meanings o f each o f the 40 h o m o graphs. The p r i m a r y a n d s e c o n d a r y associates for each h o m o g r a p h are also listed in Table 1. The f r a c t i o n a t i o n o f h o m o g r a p h s a c c o r d i n g to meanings m a y be seen to v a r y widely, f r o m those which have virtually equal p r o b a b i l i t i e s o f meanings (e.g., pitcher a n d seal) to those which have a clearly d o m i n a n t m e a n i n g (e.g., al-m a n d date). F o r p u r p o s e s o f c r o s s - v a l i d a t i o n the m e n a n d w o m e n o f this s t u d y were treated as separate p o p u l a t i o n s . C o r r e l a t i o n s between percentage scores o f m e n a n d w o m e n were then c o m p u t e d for b o t h the p r i m a r y a n d s e c o n d a r y meanings (as indexed by the reference source). The degree o f a g r e e m e n t between the sexes was very high for b o t h the p r i m a r y a n d the second a r y meaning, r ( 3 8 ) = . 9 7 a n d .96, respectively, p < .01. A d d i t i o n a l v a l i d a t i o n o f the percentage scores was p r o v i d e d b y the d a t a f r o m the sentence c o n s t r u c t i o n test. The degree o f agreement between the percentage o f p r i m a r y meanings as m e a s u r e d s e p a r a t e l y by w o r d association a n d b y sentence construction was m o d e r a t e l y high, rho(9) = .80, p < .01, for men, a n d .73, p < .02, for w o m e n . Parallel correlations for the percentage o f s e c o n d a r y meanings were .88, p < . 0 1 , a n d .75, p < .02. The results offer fairly convincing s u p p o r t for the spew-like principle. T h a t is, the semantic c o u n t was m o d e r a t e l y successful in predicting the d o m i n a n t , or m o r e frequently r e s p o n d e d to, m e a n i n g o f h o m o g r a p h s . T h e

446

KAUSLERAND KOLLASCH

dominant meaning in word association was also the more frequently occurring one in semantic counts for 30 of the 40 words in the male sample and for 31 of 40 in the female sample. These proportions clearly exceeded chance expectancy, X2 (1) = 9.02, p < .01, for men, and X2 (1) = 11.02, p < .01, for women. In addition, as may be seen in Table 1, primary associates were generally related to the more frequently occurring meaning in semantic counts (31 of the primary associates for men and 37 for women). This trend extended through the tertiary associates as well, with 32 of the tertiaries for men and 27 for women being related to the more frequently occurring meaning. Nevertheless, a sizable number of homographs yielded associative hierarchies for which the less occurring meanings were

dominant. Post-hoc interpretations of these exceptions are readily available. Words like pitcher and poker may reflect the uniqueness of the culture sampled--the baseball pitcher Bob Gibson is a potent attraction in St. Louis, poker is likely to be a popular pastime among college students, etc. Words like can and like receive their primary semantic counts through their use as functional words. Such words are unlikely to have distinctive semantic features which would encourage associative responding on the basis of matching the features. Consequently, S's associative responding is directed to the alternate meanings, meanings for which semantically rich features are available for matching purposes. Testing these and related hypotheses presents an interesting area for future investigation.

TABLE 1 WORD ASSOCIATIONS FOR 40 HOMOGRAPHS : PERCENTAGE OF ASSOCIATES FOR EACH MEANING AND THE PRIMARYSECONDARY ASSOCIATE FOR EACH HOMOGRAPH

~oAssociationsa Homograph

Men Women

Primary associateb Men

Women

Secondary associateb Men

Women

Arm

1. upper limb 2. supply weapons Base 1. bottom; station 2. mean; selfish Bass 1. deep in sound 2. fish Bat 1. club 2. flyingmammal Bowl 1. rounded dish 2. a game

93 1

97 2

Leg (35)

Leg (39)

Hand (21)

Hand (26)

85 1

88 3

Ball (54)

Ball ( 5 3 )

Baseball(5)

Bottom (6)

57 40

52 44

Guitar (12)

Drum (9)

Fish (35)

Fish (38)

62 36

68 29

Ball (52)

Ball (62) Man ( 1 9 )

A n i m a (5) l

65 22

73 13

Soup (11)

Cereal (10)

Soup (11)

84 6

89 2

Cardboard (18) Square (12)

Square (7)

Container(10)

73 19

64 29

River (17)

Water (13)

Water(16)

Cereal (14)

Box

1. container 2. strike; fight Bridge 1. structure 2. card game

River (18)

447

WORD ASSOCIATIONS TO HOMOGRAPHS Table I--continued 9/00Associations a Homograph

Men Women

Primary associate b Men

Women

Secondary associate b Men

Women

Can

Do (9)

Will (9) Opener (9)

Boy (25)

Today (12)

Today (7)

Water (13)

Quack (25)

Goose (10)

Water (13)

Hair (10)

Blonde (9) Dark (9)

Cheat (9)

65 28

Cabinet (28)

Cabinet (30)

59

66

Good (17)

2. sum of money

30

24

Fit 1. suitable; proper

83

91

42 46

35 58

Food (10)

Tin (12)

99

97

Girl (37)

1

2

Duck i. bird 2. plunge; lowerhead

78 6

84 4

Fair 1. just; beautiful

78

70

10

17

File 1. set of papers 2. steel tool

70 18

Fine l. excellent; small

1. to be able 2. metal container Date 1. time 2. fruit

2. display of goods

Nail (7) Good (20) Money (12)

Wear (9), Tight (9)

Clothes (18)

Nail(s) (20) Bad (6), Well (6) Money (6), Ticket (6) Tight (13)

4

6

Hide 1. keep from sight 2. skin

85 6

93 5

Seek (44)

Seek (51)

Find (13)

Find (17)

Host 1. receives guests 2. large number 3. Eucharist

79 0 8

83 0 14

Hostess (33)

Hostess (47)

Guest (16)

Guest (16)

Jam 1. press tightly 2. preserve o f fruit

21 77

5 94

Jelly (43)

Jelly (54)

Bread (8), Butter (8)

Toast (11), Bread (11)

Lead 1. show the way 2. metal; graphite

34 54

40 54

Follow (18) Pencil (29)

Pipe (13)

Lie 1. not true 2. prone position

57 30

62 33

Truth (27)

Like 1. similar 2. pleased with

12 65

7 81

2. disease

Love (21)

Follow (26)

Truth (19)

Love (40)

Down (17)

Down (13)

Dislike (16)

Hate (30)

448

KAUSLER AND KOLLASCI-I Table 1--continued Associationsa Homograph

Men Women

Primary associate b Men

Mean 1. have in mind 2. low in quality 3. halfway

3 57 29

8 77 8

Mine 1. belonging to me 2. hole in earth

68 28

77 21

Yours (49)

Mint 1. plant used for flavoring 2. money

71 25

87 10

Candy (32)

Miss 1. fail to hit 2. young woman

10 83

8 85

Net 1. open fabric 2. profit; gain

73 20

Page 1. one side of paper 2. boy servant

Women

Nice (21)

Secondary associate b Men

Women

Angry (10)

Nasty (8)

Gold (11)

Coal (11)

Average (12) Yours (65)

Green (12)

Candy (46) Money (21)

Mr. (17)

Mrs. (32)

Mrs. (14)

Mr. (17)

84 12

Fish (40)

Fish (39)

Catch (6)

Hair (13)

85 8

91 6

Book (56)

Book (57)

Number (6)

Number (10)

Peer 1. equal; man with title 2. look closely

46 28

56 25

Friend(s) (20)

Equal (16)

Look (17)

Perch 1. roost for birds 2. fish

62 33

60 38

Fish (31)

Fish (34)

Pitcher 1. container for liquids 2. baseball player

42 55

52 45

Water (24)

Water (25)

Poker 1. metal rod 2. card game

8 86

8 87

Riddle 1. puzzling question 2. make many holes

82 3

Ring 1. circle 2. sound

Look (15) Bird (30)

Bird (33)

Baseball (14)

Baseball (16)

Cards (24)

Cards (30)

Game (15)

Game (23)

96 0

Joke (22)

Rhyme (35)

Rhyme (20)

Joke (29)

78 14

82 9

Finger (19)

Finger (19)

Wedding (13)

Wedding (15)

Rock 1. stone

54

74

Stone (30)

Hard (14), Stone (14)

Hard (15)

2. sway

42

23

Roll (24)

46 42

51 41

Close (12)

Stamp (8)

Animal (12)

Seal 1. design on wax; shut 2. animal

Zoo (10)

449

WORD ASSOCIATIONS TO HOMOGRAPHS Table 1--continued Associations a Homograph

Men Women

Second 1. next after first 2. unit of time

67 23

59 33

Sole 1. only 2. bottom of foot 3. fish

24 42 21

20 55 11

Sow 1. scatter on ground 2. female pig

44 35

55 29

Spade 1. shovel 2. black figure; cards

64 32

74 23

Tire 1. weary 2. wheel

2 94

1 98

Wind 1. air 2. twist or turn

88 4

80 2

Primary associate b Men

Women

First (44)

Secondary associate b Men

Women

Minute (16)

Minute (15)

First (39)

Only (11) Shoe(s) (32)

Shoe (50) Fish (15) Seed(s) (16)

Pig (29)

Pig (24)

Shovel (32)

Shovel (27)

Seed(s) (23)

Hoe (14) Card(s) (18)

Car (40)

Car (55)

Wheel (10)

Wheel (14)

Blow (34)

Blow(s) (30)

Cold (9)

Breeze (7)

"The remaining associations were ambiguous with respect to the meaning referent. b The numbers in parentheses refer to the percentage of Ss giving that association.

REFERENCES BENJAMIN,T. B., & WATT, N. F. Psychopathology and semantic interpretation of ambiguous words. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1969, 74, 706714. BOUSEIELD,W. A., COHEN, B. H., WHITMARSH,G. A., & KINCAID, W. D. The Connecticut free association norms. Technical Report No. 35, 1961, University of Connecticut, Contract Nonr-631 (00), Office of Naval Research. CRAMER,P. Mediated priming of polysemous stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1968, 78, 137-144. KATZ, J. J., & FODOR, J. A. The structure of a semantic theory. Language, 1963, 39, 170-210. KAUSLER, D. H., & KAMICHOFE,N. C. Free recall of homographs and their primary associates. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1970, 9, 79-83.

LORGE, I., & THORNDIKE, E. L. A semantic count of English words. New York: Teachers College, 1938. McNEILL, D. A study of word association. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1966, 5, 548-557. PALERMO, D. S., & JENKINS, J. J. Word association norms: Grade school through college. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964. THORNDIKE,E. L., & LORGE,I. The teacher's wordbook of 30,000 words. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1944. UNDERWOOD,B. J., & SCHULZ, R. W. Meaningfulness and verbal learning. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960.

(Received February 24, 1970)