Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In this paper we address some key issues in the psychology of word meaning, and thereby motivate a Sense Generation approach to the diversity of senses that a word may have. We note that an adequate account must allow for the flexibility and specificity of senses, and must also make appropriate distinctions between default and non-default senses of a word, and between different senses for vague and ambiguous words. W e then discuss two central components of a theory of sense. Firstly, lexons, the stable representations, in a "mental lexicon", of word meanings; secondly, senses, the mentally represented descriptions associated with particular uses of words. W e argue that the crucial issues in accounting for the diversity of sense, are: the number of lexons we need to postulate, and the relationship between the contents of those lexons and their associated senses. Sense Selection accounts, of which we distinguish Strong and Weak versions, both of which find considerable support in the cognitive science Literature, fail to Account for the flexibility and specificity of senses in a way that is consonant with linguistic evidence regarding the ambiguity of words, and psychological evidence regarding the coherence which underlies their use. W e will show how the Sense Generation approach, by positing a nonmonotonic relationship between lexons and their senses, respects these considerations. W e sketch this approach, and finally note some of its promising implications for other aspects of word meaning.