The role of polysemy in masked semantic and translation prim(9)

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representation,wearepresentedwiththepossibilityofarepresentationalasymmetrybetweenrelatedwords.In-stancesofthisasymmetrycanbefoundbetweenwordswithinalanguageaswellasbetweentranslationequiv-alentsacrosslanguages.TakingawordpairwithinEn-glishasanexample,arepresentationalasymmetryissaidtoexistbetweentwolexicalrepresentationswhen(one)theyshareatleastonesemanticsenseand(two)whenonewordhasmanydi erentsenses(e.g.,‘‘head’’hasmultipleusages,including:partofananimal’sbody;headofstate;fullheadofsteam;headinginadirection,etc.)andtheotherhasveryfew(e.g.,‘‘skull’’onlyhasonesense:partofananimal’sbody).Withinlanguages,itisrelativelyuncommonto ndwordpairsthatmeetthesecriteria.Wesuggestthattranslationequivalents,ontheotherhand,frequentlymeetthecriteriaofarepresentationalasymmetry.Forexample,translationequivalents,byvirtueofbeing‘‘equivalent,’’presumablyshareatleastonesemanticsense.Furthermore,becausebilinguals,generallyspeaking,aremorepro cientintheirL1thanintheirL2and,thus,aremorefamiliarwiththerangeofusagesthatL1wordsmayhave,thenumberofsensesassociatedwithL1wordsisthoughttoexceedthenumberofsemanticsensesassociatedwithL2words.

Thetranslationprimingasymmetryinlexicaldeci-sionisseentobethenaturalconsequenceofthisrep-resentationalasymmetry.Recentworkinvestigatingthein uenceofsemanticsensesonlexicaldecisionpro-cesseshasfoundthatresponsetimesaresensitivetothenumberofsensesassociatedwithaparticulartarget(Rodd,Gaskell,&Marslen-Wilson,2002;seealsoGeneraldiscussion).Giventhis nding,itisreasonabletoconsiderthepossibilitythatsemanticprimingre ectsthee cacyoftheprimewordtopreactivatethese-manticsensesassociatedwiththetargetword(cf.Cree,McRae,&McNorgan,1999,forasimilar‘‘featureoverlap’’accountofsemanticpriming).Accordingtothisaccountofsemanticpriming,theamountofprimingwouldincreaseastheproportionofprimedtounprimedsensesinthelexicalsemanticrepresentationofthetargetwordincreases.IntheL1–L2direction,weproposethattheproportionofL2sensesprimedbytheL1primeisgoingtobeveryhigh,ifnotcomplete.Thisisbecausemost,ifnotall,ofthesensesassociatedwiththeL2formarealsoassociatedwiththeL1equivalentform(muchlikethesenseof‘‘skull’’isalsoassociatedwith‘‘head’’).Priminginthisdirection,then,shouldbeveryreliable,anditis(deGroot&Nas,1991;Gollanetal.,1997;Jiang,1999;Keatlyetal.,1994;Williams,1994).However,inthereversedirection(L2–L1),theproportionofL1sensesprimedbytheL2primeisgoingtobeverylow(e.g.,1:8).Thisisbecauseitisfrequentlythecasethattherearemanysensesassoci-atedwiththeL1formthatarenotsimilarlyassociatedwiththeL2prime(again,muchliketherelationshipbetween‘‘head’’and‘‘skull,’’wheremanysensesof‘‘head’’arenotassociatedwith‘‘skull’’).Accordingly,priminginthisdirectionshouldbeveryweak,anditis(Gollanetal.,1997;Grainger&Frenck-Mestre,

1998;