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Abstract:
Words’ meanings vary with context. When do context effects arise? The answer to this is critical for deciding between
theories assuming that meanings are accessed from a stable mental lexicon and theories that suggest meanings are
constructed ad hoc. On the first view, a word form activates an invariant semantic representation, which is subsequently
tailored to fit the context (e.g., Evans, 2009; Machery, 2010). On an alternative view, word forms are cues to construct
meaning; the information that gets activated is always co-determined by the word and its context (Elman, 2004; 2009;
Lai, Hagoort, & Casasanto, 2011).