Research Overview
My linguistic research has encompassed two major areas in the past decade: Construction of a psycholinguistic theory of sense processing, and construction of a cognitive model to explain conceptual and novel metaphor processing. These two major areas are inter-connected and systemized by two important scientific perspectives which underlie my research vision: (1) operational definitions of linguistic phenomena lead to more explanatory theories, and (2) psycholinguistics tasks that tap into immediate and automatic language processing are preferred.
Construction of a psycholinguistic theory of sense processing
Any theory of sense processing must deal with how the brain accesses multiple meanings and then how the correct meaning is selected among the possible interpretations. Work in my psycholinguistics lab has demonstrated that words with more meanings are accessed faster than words with fewer meanings, pointing to a random access model of lexical access (Lin and Ahrens 2005). In addition, cross-modal reaction time experiments has demonstrated that all meanings are exhaustively accessed even when preceding context allows only one correct meaning. Then, once access has occurred, the correct meaning is selected, indicating a bottom-up and modular model of lexical access (Ahrens 2006).
Construction of a cognitive model to explain conceptual and novel metaphor processing
A natural extension from the question of sense processing involves the issue of sense creation. Conceptual metaphors are lexical items that have had a sense extended from a concrete source domain to a more abstract target domain. In recent work, I have examined this issue from both a corpora-based and an experimental-based perspective and proposed the Conceptual Mapping Model (Ahrens, Forthcoming). Corpora-based analyses of conceptual metaphor data demonstrate that mappings from the source to target domain have an underlying reason, or Mapping Principle. In addition, frequency is the driving factor in determining this underlying reason (Ahrens, Chung, & Huang 2003, 2004). That is, source-target domain pairings are not simply random occurrences. Each target domain selects its source domain for a particular reason, and selection of an additional source domain will only be done for a different reason. This is known as the Mapping Principle Constraint. Both the Mapping Principle and its associated constraint have furthered our understanding of conceptual metaphor use.
Mapping Principles, furthermore, also make predictions about how novel metaphors are processed. For example, work in my lab has demonstrated through off-line and on-line psycholinguistic experiments that conceptual metaphors vary in their degree of novel-ness depending on whether or not they follow their Mapping Principles (Ahrens, Forthcoming). A recent fMRI study on conceptual metaphors, the first of its kind in Chinese, shows that conventional metaphors only recruit a small amount of right hemisphere resources, while very novel metaphors recruit a frontal and temporal resources bilaterally (Ahrens et al. 2007). In short, my research on understanding the mental processes surrounding lexical access, lexical ambiguity, and the processing of conceptual and novel metaphors has led to significant advances in conceptual metaphor theory.
Operational Definitions of Linguistic Phenomena
Linguistics is the study of language, but until recently language wasn't so much studied as reflected upon. Linguists, through reflecting on the apparent grammaticality of sentences in their native language, constructed theories about the nature and organization of the language system. Recent advances in both experimental paradigms and large-scale corpora construction now allow linguistics to gather information about language phenomena in ways that can be replicated by other scientists. This ability to verify previous research can only come about if step-by-step methodologies are given for the linguistic analysis. However, this does not mean that linguistic intuition is ignored, it simply means that it is now used to generate hypotheses which are then checked by corpora-based and experimental data. For example, in one of my recent papers (Ahrens 2006a), I demonstrated that the hypothesis that the use of generic male terms has fallen in America since the 1970's was plausible, by creating a corpus of presidential speeches and examining the diachronic patterns of occurrences of key lexical items. In another example, Chung and Ahrens (Forthcoming) take additional steps to clarify and operationalize the steps needed for a parsimonious analysis of verbal synonyms in the Module-Attribute Representation of Verbal Semantics, following on work done by Ahrens et al. (2003). The new analysis (Chung and Ahrens, Forthcoming) uses corpora-based tools to analyze the mutual information value of frequent collocates in order to hypothesize the event-internal role for each verb.
Immediate and Automatic Language Processing
When running psycholinguistic experiments, it is necessary to chose experimental paradigms that test the hypothesis under consideration. For example, for many years, there has been debate in the literature as to whether multiple meanings are accessed in parallel or serially, and in addition, whether preceding context can influence access of lexical semantic information (i.e. whether lexical access is modular or interactive). What is interesting about these studies is that those who argued for an interactive approach often used timing methods that did not allow for immediate and automatic access. Ahrens (2006b) demonstrated that when the visual target presentation times are 300ms, multiple access is found. Longer presentation times, however, allow priming only for the contextually appropriate meaning. Methodology also plays an important role in understanding how conceptual metaphors are accessed. While many researchers argued that conceptual metaphors are not accessed and understood on-line, Gong and Ahrens (In Press), demonstrates that the visual presentation in paragraph form allows for on-line integration and access of conceptual metaphors, while line-by-line presentations set up expectations for new information, inhibiting conceptual metaphor access.
Corpora-based and Experimental Approaches to Language
In sum, my research focus on experimental-based approaches to cognitive semantics has shed light on the following issues in language processing: lexical ambiguity, lexical access, conceptual metaphor access and conceptual metaphor comprehension. In addition, corpus-based approaches have proved fruitful when examining the following issues in lexical semantics: sense representation, diachronic lexical variation, and the underlying reasons for source-target domain pairings in conceptual metaphors. Future work will focus on using corpora-based data as one criteria for constraining experimental stimuli in order to achieve an even greater level of explanatory adequacy. To conclude, my research on understanding the mental processes of sense representation and processing has led to noteworthy developments in comprehending these complex cognitive phenomena.
References
Ahrens, Kathleen. (Forthcoming). Mapping Principles for Conceptual Metaphors. In Cameron, Lynne, Alice Deignan, Graham Low, Zazie Todd (eds). Researching and Applying Metaphor in the Real World. John Benjamins.
Ahrens, Kathleen, Siaw-Fong Chung, Huang Chu-Ren. 2003. Conceptual Metaphors: Ontology-based Representation and Corpora Driven Mapping Principles. In the Proceedings of the ACL Workshop on the Lexicon and Figurative Language. pp. 35-41.
Ahrens, Kathleen, Siaw-Fong Chung and Chu-Ren Huang. 2004. From Lexical Semantics to Conceptual Metaphors: Mapping Principle Verification with WordNet and SUMO. In Ji Donghong, Lua Kim Teng, and Wang Hui (Eds). Recent Advancement in Chinese Lexical Semantics: Proceedings of 5th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop (CLSW-5). Singapore: COLIPS. pp. 99-106.
Ahrens, Kathleen, Ho-Ling Liu, Chia-Ying Lee, Shu-Ping Gong, Shin-Yi Fang and Yuan-Yu Hsu. 2007. Functional MRI of Conventional and Anomalous Metaphors in Mandarin Chinese. Brain and Language. 100(2), 163-171.
Ahrens, Kathleen. 2006a. Using a Small Corpus to Test Linguistic Hypotheses: Evaluating 'People' in the State of the Union Addresses. International Journal of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 11(4), pp. 377-392.
Ahrens, Kathleen. 2006b. The Effect of Visual Target Presentation Times on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution. Language and Linguistics, 7(3): 677-696.
Ahrens, Kathleen, Chu-Ren Huang, and Shirley Chuang. 2003. Sense and Meaning Facets in Verbal Semantics: A MARVS Perspective. Language and Linguistics, 4(3), 468-484.
Chung, Siaw-Fong and Kathleen Ahrens. Forthcoming. MARVS Revisited: Operationalizing Sense Frequency and MI Values. Language and Linguistics: Lexicon, Grammar and Natural Language Processing.
Gong, S-P & Ahrens, Kathleen. (In Press). Processing Conceptual Metaphors in On-Going Discourse. Metaphor & Symbol.
Lin, Chienjer Charles & Kathleen Ahrens. 2005. How Many Meanings Does A Word Have? Meaning Estimation in Chinese and English. In James Menitt and William S-Y Wang (eds.) Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence: Essays in Evolutionary Linguistics. pp. 437-464. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.
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