Influence of thematic relations on the comprehension of modifier–noun combinations.

To comprehend a nonpredicating combination involving a modifier (e.g., mountain) and a head noun (e.g., stream), one must specify a thematic relation (e.g., a stream in the mountains) that links the 2 constituent concepts. The authors investigated the influence of thematic relations on the comprehension of nonpredicating combinations. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated that people use information about what relations the constituents typically instantiate during conceptual combination. More specifically, a combination is easier to interpret when it uses a frequent relation of the modifier than when it uses a less frequent relation. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that these results are not an artifact of the individual component words. The authors propose a model of conceptual combination called the competition among relations in nominals (CARIN) model in which ease of comprehension depends both on the frequency of the to-be-selected relation and on the frequency of the alternatives.