Understanding and Using Non-Literal Language
{'Code': '04040500', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'SBE', 'LongName': 'Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'BCS', 'LongName': 'Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Jasmine Young', 'PO_EMAI': 'jyoung@nsf.gov', 'PO_PHON': '7032924833'}
Ambiguity is an inherent characteristic of natural language use                 and comprehension.  Many words, for example, have multiple                      meanings, e.g., the word PORT can mean a wine, a harbor, the left               side of a ship, etc.  Sentences can also have multiple                          interpretations, e.g., who is doing the visiting in the sentence:               "visiting enemies can be dangerous"?  Despite the ubiquity of                   such lexical and syntactic ambiguities in natural language,                     people are able to understand one another quite well.  How people               use context to decide among alternative meanings has been studied               extensively and is now fairly well understood.  There is,                       however, an additional and important type of ambiguity that                     remains unexplored and is not well understood:  the ambiguity                   between literal and nonliteral meanings.  How do people use                     context to choose among the several possible interpretations of                 an utterance?                                                                                                                                                   Traditional theories of nonliteral language use do not go beyond                the notion that people will search for a nonliteral                             interpretation whenever a literal interpretation does not make                  sense in context.  How this search is accomplished remains to be                discovered.  This research will be concerned with how people                    arrive at nonliteral interpretations in various contexts.  The                  research will focus on three important types of nonliteral                      language: metaphor, irony, and idioms.  The central question is                 how people combine the literal meanings of utterances with                      conversational context so that a speaker's intended meanings are                correctly understood?  The first step will be to determine the                  communicative functions of these types of nonliteral language                   use.  With respect to metaphors, for example, why should speakers               use a metaphor form, such as "my job is a jail" instead of the                  presumably simpler literal form, "my job is like a jail"?  The                  communicative functions of metaphor, irony, and idioms will be                  assessed by determining what people understand and remember when                various forms of communication are used.  Information                           transmission wil be assessed as well as connotations and                        perceptions of speakers' intentions and attitudes.  The second                  step will be to identify the linguistic and contextual cues that                people use to understand utterances as literal or nonliteral.                   Prior work has already shown that people will arrive at                         nonliteral interpretations even when literal interpretations are                perfectly acceptable. This finding suggests that the traditional                "literal-first" theory is incomplete, at best.  The overall goal                of the research is to develop a more adequate description of how                people understand nonliteral language. This is a necessary                      component of the theory of language use and comprehension.  Such                a theory, in turn, is necessary for developing more effective                   educational methods and materials, and for developing workable                  machine recognition and comprehension devices for natural                       language.
{'FirstName': 'Sam', 'LastName': 'Glucksberg', 'PI_MID_INIT': None, 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Sam Glucksberg', 'EmailAddress': 'sang@pucc.princeton.edu', 'NSF_ID': '000156639', 'StartDate': '03/01/1989', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
{'Name': 'Princeton University', 'CityName': 'PRINCETON', 'ZipCode': '085442001', 'PhoneNumber': '6092583090', 'StreetAddress': '1 NASSAU HALL', 'StreetAddress2': None, 'CountryName': 'United States', 'StateName': 'New Jersey', 'StateCode': 'NJ', 'CONGRESSDISTRICT': '12', 'CONGRESS_DISTRICT_ORG': 'NJ12', 'ORG_UEI_NUM': 'NJ1YPQXQG7U5', 'ORG_LGL_BUS_NAME': 'THE TRUSTEES OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY', 'ORG_PRNT_UEI_NUM': None}
{'Name': None, 'CityName': None, 'StateCode': None, 'ZipCode': None, 'StreetAddress': None, 'CountryCode': None, 'CountryName': None, 'StateName': None, 'CountryFlag': None, 'CONGRESSDISTRICT': None, 'CONGRESS_DISTRICT_PERF': '""'}
[{'Code': '118000', 'Text': 'HUMAN COGNITION & PERCEPTION'}, {'Code': '131100', 'Text': 'Linguistics'}, {'Code': '914500', 'Text': 'SPECIAL PROGRAMS-RESERVE'}]
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1988&All=true', 'xml': '8819657.xml'}