The role of salience in conceptual combination

Abstract

The present study investigated three factors that affect the interpretation of novel noun-noun (N-N) combinations: Simple feature salience, ontological category, and assessed similarity. Participants read and defined a series of novel N-N combinations in which the feature salience of N1 and N2 was manipulated. Participants also rated the combinations for similarity. The combinations were constrained to be within ontological category. All interpretations were scored in terms of the strategies (property mapping vs. relation linking) used to produce the given interpretations. Highly salient features drove property-mapping interpretations based on those features. Natural kinds produced more property-mapping interpretations than did artifacts. There was no correlation between the proportion of property-mapping interpretations and the assessed similarity of the N-N combinations. These results are discussed as an extension of Estes and Glucksberg's (2000) interactive theory of conceptual combination and argue for the importance of feature salience as a factor in conceptual combination.