In an earlier post, I mentioned a widely accepted theory within the field of cognitive science, which is that individuals construct packets of organized associations and knowledge called schemata, schemes, or scripts. Word associations are also organized into packets of information within a theoretical space called ‘the mental lexicon.’ Since this mental lexicon does not reside in any particular part of the human brain, this intangibility makes it a difficult concept to discuss. This is why scholars who talk about the mental lexicon tend to compare it metaphorically to other more familiar things, like dictionaries, encyclopedias, semantic webs, and databases.
People (and computers) possess varying levels of knowledge about individual lexical items. Think of this knowledge like a small snowball at the top of a hill. If you wanted to build the base of a snowman, you could roll that little ball down the hill. As it rolled, it would accumulate more snow and grow larger. Along with the snow, it might also also accumulate dirt, leaves, twigs, and rocks. So at the bottom of the hill, it would be larger, but not everything within the snowball would actually be snow. Lexical learning is a similar process. Information individuals acquire about words can be correct, partially correct, or incorrect. For this reason, cognitive scientists (cf: Rapaport & Kibby, 2001-2012) use the term ‘beliefs’ instead of ‘knowledge.
Today, I categorize the word knowledge specifically hypothesized to reside within the theoretical space we call ‘the mental lexicon.’ [technically, the cog-sci designation ‘beliefs’ is more accurate, though I use the more common parlance term below]. The sheer variety and quantity of lexical knowledge in any individual’s storehouse illustrate why neither dictionary, encylopedia, or database provide apt comparison. The list below is constructed with English in mind, although it would not be significantly different for other world languages.
(1) Phonological knowledge relates to word pronunciations.
Stable phonological representations of words reside in the mental lexicon. These could be the correct/conventionalized pronunciations or they could be mispronunciations. The reason stable phonological representations are valuable is that they allows for rapid recognition of words in oral language contexts (while listening). For some words, individuals may also possess knowledge about other pronunciations (e.g., ways that words are pronounced by people who speak the language with a different dialect or regional accent. Production knowledge (e.g., the ability to pronounce words intelligibly for others) is another form of phonological knowledge.
(2) Orthographic knowledge is knowledge of spelling.
The recognition side of the orthographic equation involves the ability to recognize the print form of a word on paper. Orthographic production knowledge involves knowing how to write/spell words. Also in the lexicon might be knowledge of alternative spellings; for example, words might be spelled differently in British versus American English).
(3) Syntactic knowledge concerns grammar and word order.
For many words, an individual may be know part-of-speech classification(s). Note that many English words can be used as more than one part-of-speech. The ability to use the word grammatically in sentences is another display of syntactic knowledge.
(4) Semantic knowledge is the knowledge of word meaning(s).
Knowledge of words’ general meanings or senses is stored in the lexicon. Most English words are slightly polysemous, and many others are highly polysemous – these insights may be part of an individual’s semantic knowledge, as well. Also under the semantic umbrella is knowledge of words related to a particular word and how these all fit into a semantic continuum relative to each other. Synonyms or close synonyms and antonyms or close antonyms are forms of semantic knowledge. So is knowledge of ways that word meaning(s) can extended in usage, e.g. through the processes of metaphorical and humorous extensions. Finally, another type of semantic knowledge relates to connotation; word senses can sometimes be placed along a continuum of positive to negative.
(5) Pragmatic knowledge relates to word usage in a situational sense.
This includes knowledge about the ways that words can be used in various contexts, knowledge of differences in the ways that word are used in specific domains or fields, and knowledge of collocations (other words that frequently appear in combination with this word.
(6) Schematic knowledge concerns conceptual relationships.
For a given word, an individual may have schematic knowledge of other concepts with which it is associated.
(7) Morphological and etymological knowledge relate to word history and form, including knowledge of a word’s morphology.
This involves recognition of roots or bases in the word, recognition of affixes (prefixes or suffixes) in the word, knowledge about the meanings of these word parts (which could be correct or incorrect), and perhaps even knowledge of word history (etymology). Etymological knowledge may allow for recognition of the language from which a word was derived, knowledge of morphology (see above), and awareness of changes in the word ‘s meaning that have occurred over time.
There are several categories of meaning change over time, by the way: generalizations, specializations, and meaning shifts. This is where I will pick up my discussion in my next post.
Whew! An extraordinary amount of information is stored in the theoretical mental lexicon, isn’t it? The obvious implication of this list is that the only reasonable answer to the question, “Do you know the word X?” is “It depends!” Sometimes, you can have a high degree of confidence about what you ‘know,’ but your beliefs prove to be incorrect, or your understanding is incomplete.
I will give you just one example. One of the words I chose for my dissertation study of contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) was detritus. I was highly confident in my knowledge of this word. I had read it in many hundreds of contexts and had selected 8 target texts containing the word for use in my study (along with target texts containing dozens of other target words). I spoke the word out loud hundreds of times and in my mind thousands of times during the course of my investigation and data analysis, and a few dozen times in conference presentations. So my ears perked up when I heard a person being interviewed on a National Public Radio broadcast use the word yet pronounce it differently. Poor fellow, I thought, amusedly. How embarrassing to mispronounce a word in an NPR interview! Curiosity got the better of me, though, and that evening I ‘Googled’ detritus. The first search result allowed me to play an audiorecording of the word’s pronunciation. Lo and behold, the computer told me the word was pronounced /dəˈtrīdəs/. To this day, I still have /det ri’təs/ as the phonological representation in my mind. I’ve pronounced it incorrectly so many times that I can’t forget my own mispronunciation, which I believed wholeheartedly to be accurate knowledge, until I was proven wrong.
Have you ever had a situation when the word knowledge you possessed proved to be inaccurate? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Until next time, happy reading!!
References
Crystal, D. (2006). How language works: How babies babble, words change meaning, and languages live or die. New York: Avery/Penguin Random House.
Henning, J. (1995). Meaning change. Model Languages 1(4). Retrieved on March 3, 2010 from http://www.langmaker.com/ml0104.htm
Rapaport., W.J. & Kibby, M.W. (2001-2012). Contextual vocabulary analysis: From algorithm to curriculum (Bibliography). Retrieved on December 20, 2015 from http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/CVA/
Steinmetz, S. (2009). Semantic antics: How and why words change meanings. New York: Random House.
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