Martin Schäfer (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität /Jena /Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik): Compound semantics and semantic transparency

The semantic transparency of compound nouns has played a major role in
theories and experimental investigations of morphological processing
and conceptual combination. Despite its importance, the factors
leading to differences in perceived semantic transparency remain
poorly understood. My talk focusses on the role of the semantic
structure of a compound in determining its semantic
transparency. After presenting statistical models for semantic
transparency that include semantic-based predictors (cf. Bell and
Schäfer 2016), I discuss further implications of the models and the
data for an appropriate understanding of semantic transparency