Understanding old words with new meanings

Abstract

Most theories of comprehension assume that every word in an utterance is comprehended by selecting its intended sense from a short exhaustive list of potential senses in the mental lexicon. This assumption is challenged by novel words based on proper nouns, as in After Joe listened to the tape of the interview, he did a Richard Nixon to a portion of it i.e., erased. Experiment 1 demonstrated that people interpret verb phrases like do a Nixon against a hierarchy of information assumed to be shared by the speaker and his addressees: Nixon's identity; acts associated with Nixon; types of acts appropriate to the utterance; and the type of act specifically intended. Experiment 2 demonstrated that people expect the intended type of act to be coherent, and to be salient among the acts associated with Nixon. It is argued that creating senses, as with do a Nixon, works differently from selecting senses, and that many words require a mixture of both. © 1983 Academic Press, Inc.