Personal Dictionary
The concept of how a speaker is able to filter through their mental lexicon and find the exact word they are looking for, and at an amazing speed can be difficult to comprehend and even harder to prove. Examples of studies in The Ascent of Babel beginning on page 68, brought about many explanations for how the mental lexicon operates, but provided no concrete example upon which I could rely. This is why I have decided to take the concept of the mental lexicon from the reading and present visual diagrams that make a difficult to understand concept, mildly more tangible. It is then easier to work backwards, in my opinion, and apply examples to a more rigid set of concepts.
While the mental lexicon is often compared to a dictionary, such as the OED, they are not at all used in the same way, even if they produce the same output. Dictionaries can be searched according to meaning, pronunciation, spelling, rhyme, length, etcâ?¦ as can the mental lexicon. However, the dictionary is viewed exactly for the word that you are in search of where as the mental lexicon examines all the other words around the target word, at an amazing speed, in the attempt to find the appropriate word. This becomes very obvious, at least for me when I am writing a paper and I have an idea of the word that I wish to use but cannot put my finger on it. I can go about searching for the word in my mental lexicon several different ways. I can examine words that have the same meaning as the concept I am trying to convey, I can think of words that begin with the same first letter as my target word, or do a similar search based on any concept that can be used to search a physical dictionary. However, while searching my mental lexicon I must give some thought to other words that may qualify regardless of how far off base or sometimes and even ridiculous they might be. This seems most evident to me when a word is used, particularly in speech and then a pause follows where you establish the word you chose was not the correct choice at all, or as I have been known to do in class presentations, replace it with a non-standard less than formal choice, like crap.
Native speakers can recognize a word in 200ms or less and reject a non-word in less than half a second. According to Seashore & Erickson, 1940, the average educated adult has approximately 150,000 words in their lexicon and is able to use 90% of them. With all these masses of words to choose from, like stated above, there are several opportunities to make errors. The available models of understanding how a lexical choice is made, or a word is activated only do a partial job of explaining the phenomena.
Stepping Stone Model
[A stepping-stone model model]. 1/27/2008, from: http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/IM_97/Lecture12/L12.html
â?¢ Semantic Slips â?? words that belong to the same category or family can easily be mistaken, such as otter for beaver.
â?¢ Sound Errors â?? explains errors made based on sound similarity such as beaker and beaver.
â?¢ Does not explain a word choice that is both incorrect in sound and semantic.
Water Fall Model
[A waterfall model]. 1/27/2008, from: http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/IM_97/Lecture12/L12.html
â?¢ Meaning is considered while the sound is decided, creating a narrowing of word choices. Such as a badger / beaver error, simple because they are small animals.
â?¢ However, waterfall effect does not explain the reverse phenomena. Such as, if asked to name woodland animals several may come to mind, but more will surface when letters are suggested.
Interaction Activation Model
[An interaction activation model]. 1/27/2008, from: http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/IM_97/Lecture12/L12.html
â?¢ Sounds can activate meaning, meaning can activate sounds, this model allows for flow in both directions.
â?¢ Activation travels back and forth between meaning and sound, making the correct choice stronger and the wrong choice weaker. Errors are made when attention is not being paid and the wrong choice is selected.
In what ways do you think you use your mental lexicon on the daily basis?
Considering all three of these models contain flaws, what proof is there that this is how we understand and access words in our lexicon? How do the research examples in The Ascent of Babel (68-73) support of refute these models?