The role of experience in the interpretation of noun-noun combinations
Artificial Intelligence Review, 25 (1):
139--160 (2007)Abstract
Gagné and Shobenâ's (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 23:71-87, 1997) Competition Among Relations In Nominals (CARIN) theory maintains that the interpretation of modifier-noun combinations is influenced primarily by how the modifying noun has been used in thepast. As support for this theory, they found that modifiers typically associated with the instantiated relation are interpretedreliably faster than those whose modifiers are less frequently associated with the relation. The CARIN theory explains thisphenomenon by proposing that people store statistical distributions regarding the frequency with which modifying nouns havecombined with each relation in the past. However, we maintain that an association between relation frequency and responsetime does not imply a causal influence. In this study we explore whether the effects observed by Gagné and Shoben were causedby the influence of relation frequency per se. Two experiments were conducted in which experiential knowledge about the modifierwas controlled. The first experiment involved combinations whose modifiers were relatively rare and the second involved thepresentation of nouns without a modifier-head syntax. In both of these experiments, knowledge about historical modifier usagewas irrelevant. Our results show that correlations between modifier preference and response time persist even in situationswhere a knowledge of the modifier's history is not available. These findings provide converging evidence that the relationshipbetween relation frequency and response time is not a causal one. Instead, an understanding of the relationship between modifierproperties and usage, as appropriate to the given context, may be the dominant influence on interpretation in many circumstances.In light of this, we propose an alternative account of the factors influencing ease of interpretation.