الفهرس 
Semantic AmbiguityOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Lexical ambiguity is ubiquitous across the world languages. Just what mechanism underlies the resolution of this ambiguity is a difficult issue to pin down because languages package semantic information differently due to their different morphological and orthographic systems. In this study, Arabic word with Multiple Unrelated Meanings (MM words) and words with Multiple Unrelated Senses (MS words) are examined. We argue that both MM and MS should show an ambiguity advantage in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), because both types of words are accessed via their root morphemes as claimed by the Obligatory Morphological Model (OMD) (Boudelaa, 2014). Five experiments were run, 3 lexical decision tasks (LDT) and 2 semantic categorization tasks, with increasing task difficulty (Armstrong & Plaut, 2016). In the first LDT, standard nonwords were used and both MM and MS words showed an ambiguity advantage, consistent with the OMD. The second experiment used the same stimuli in degraded modality. This time, the MM words showed an ambiguity disadvantage, consistent with the Semantics Settling Dynamics (SSD). In the third LDT, pseudo-homophones were used which showed MS advantage and a no effect for MM. Experiment 4 used the food category as a narrow semantic category, and this showed an ambiguity advantage for both MM and MS, consistent with the OMD. The last experiment used a broad semantic category, the living thing category, and revealed an ambiguity advantage for MS but no effects for MM. These results can be accommodated within a hybrid approach combining the OMD and the SSD such that in easy manipulations both MM and MS induce ambiguity advantage, caused by root activation, whereas in more complex manipulations, MM show a no effect or a disadvantage.