I read, I cut, and I (mis)select: Written-phrase misunderstanding shown by lexical activation and selection

I read, I cut, and I (mis)select: Written-phrase misunderstanding shown by lexical activation and selection 

Ami Pramesti Jewalani

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities

Universitas Indonesia

ami.pramesti@ui.ac.id

Myrna Laksman-Huntley

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities

Universitas Indonesia

laksman@ui.ac.id

Harwintha Yuhria Anjarningsih

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities

Universitas Indonesia

harwintha@ui.ac.id

Language is complex since it is composed by the combination of sounds whose meanings have no relation to their form. Processing it therefore, requires some steps. Splitting the sound set into pieces that have meaning is the step to be passed before finding out the meaning of the cut pieces. Different cuts made to the string of sounds will lead to different understandings. Intonation, in spoken language, helps listeners divide the pieces to be understood. In written form, however, readers have little clue by the punctuation mark, but once they are missing, misinterpretations are likely to occur. This study examines the way Bahasa Indonesia speakers process written language and how wrong ideas can come up to their minds by observing their lexical selection.

Using definitions of 12 low frequency nouns in Bahasa Indonesia as the stimuli, a lot of varied words were brought out by the participants in the 15 seconds per definition allocated to them. Most of the answers are not the target words represented by the definitions. Nevertheless, at a glance, those words are connected in some way with the definitions. Thus, by applying chunk and pass theory (Christiansen & Cater, 2016) the words are analyzed according to the possible chunks made from the definitions. Frame semantic theory (Fillmore, 1976) is used to explain how different words are activated while reading a text.

The words selected by the participants demonstrate that in processing written text, definitions in this case, the readers chunk the words constructing the text. The chunked words are then conceptualized that leads to frame activation along with words related to the frames. Apparently, most of the words that are different from the targets, are related to one frame activated from the chunked written text rather than to the combination of all chunks. This is why the selected words differ from the target words. In other words, misinterpretation in reading may occur since readers activate many frames but select one frame instead of their combination in deciding what it is intended by the text. This finding can be utilized in vocabulary enrichment activities in children and adult language teaching.

Key words: Frame semantics, lexical selection, written text processing, conceptualization; reading Bahasa Indonesia