The complex interactions of context availability, polysemy, word frequency, and orthographic variables during lexical processing.

In this study we examined the interactions of context availability, polysemy, word frequency, and orthographic neighborhood variables during lexical processing. Context availability and polysemy interacted, in that words that were both lower in context availability and had fewer related senses were especially disadvantaged, as was originally reported by Tokowicz and Kroll (2007). Word frequency interacted with both polysemy and context availability, in that the effects of polysemy and context availability were stronger for lower-frequency words.

A comparison of homonym meaning frequency estimates derived from movie and television subtitles, free association, and explicit ratings.

Most words are ambiguous, with interpretation dependent on context. Advancing theories of ambiguity resolution is important for any general theory of language processing, and for resolving inconsistencies in observed ambiguity effects across experimental tasks. Focusing on homonyms (words such as bank with unrelated meanings EDGE OF A RIVER vs.