6533b857fe1ef96bd12b3b31
RESEARCH PRODUCT
I saw this somewhere else: the Spanish Ambiguous Words (SAW) database
Montserrat ComesañaManuel PereaIsabel FragaIsabel Padrónsubject
Linguistics and LanguageSocial SciencesMeaning (non-linguistic)Spanishcomputer.software_genreHomographs050105 experimental psychologyLanguage and LinguisticsSemantic ambiguityTask (project management)03 medical and health sciencesWord learning0302 clinical medicineLexical decision task:Psicologia [Ciências Sociais]0501 psychology and cognitive sciencesDatabase4. Education05 social sciencesPolysemous words16. Peace & justiceLinguisticsPredictive powerCiências Sociais::PsicologiaNormativePsychologycomputer030217 neurology & neurosurgeryWord (group theory)description
The present paper describes the Spanish Ambiguous Words (SAW) database, which comprises 210 words (133 polysemous and 77 homographs). Three-hundred and fifteen Spanish university students took part in the study on which SAW is based. First, subjective word meanings and senses were collected by means of a meaning retrieval task. Two judges then assigned participants’ responses to different categories of meaning according to lexicographical and statistical criteria. Results showed that, while there was a relatively high relationship between the number of senses included in the dictionary and those provided by participants (r = .62), regression analyses on lexical decision and naming times revealed that participants’ number of senses had significant predictive power, whereas those from the dictionary did not. This indicates that normative data from participants seem to better reflect the psychological reality of word senses. Hence, the SAW database constitutes a useful tool for future research into ambiguous word learning and recognition in Spanish.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-01-01 |