The representation of polysemous words

Words that have a number of related senses are polysemous. For example, paper refers to both a substance and a publication printed on that substance. Five experiments investigated whether different senses are represented distinctly in the lexicon or if there is a common, core meaning. In all experiments, a polysemous word was used twice, in phrases that selected the same or different senses. Experiment 1 showed that sense consistency aided memory for the polysemous word. Experiment 2 extended this result to a timed sensicality judgment task. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the effects fur polysemous words were very similar to those for homonyms. Experiment 4 ruled out the possibility of modifier-modifier priming. Experiment 5 showed that sense consistency facilitates comprehension relative to a neutral baseline, while sense inconsistency inhibits comprehension. These experiments provide evidence that polysemous words have separate representations for each sense and that ally core meaning is minimal. (C) 2001 Academic Press.