The Cognitive Science of Language lecture series next talk is taking place on Tuesday October 17, 2:30-4:20pm. The lecture will be delivered in person by Dr. Lívia Körtvélyessy  and Dr. Pavol Štekauer. Lívia Körtvélyessy and Pavol Štekauer are full professor at Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia. They cooperated on several projects whose results were published by prestigious publishing houses, for example, Körtvélyessy, L., Štekauer, P., Ka?mar, P. 2022. Creativity in Word-Formation and Word-Interpretation. Creative Potential and Creative Performance.  Cambridge University Press; Körtvélyessy, L., Bagasheva, A., Štekauer, P. 2020. Derivational networks across languages. Mouton de Gruyter;  Štekauer, P., Valera, S., Körtvélyessy, L. 2012. Word-Formation in the World’s Languages. A Typological Survey. Cambridge University Press. They are editors of several volumes, such as Körtvélyessy and Grandi. 2015. Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology 2015. Edinburgh University Press;  Lieber and Štekauer. 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology. Oxford University Press; Lieber and Štekauer. 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Compounding. Oxford University Press; Štekauer and Lieber. 2005. The Handbook of Word-Formation. Springer; and Körtvélyessy and Štekauer. To appear. Onomatopoeia in the world’s languages. Mouton de Gruyter. In addition, they are authors of other monographs, edited volumes, and research papers. They are editors of the SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics indexed in Web of Science and  Scopus.

Please email lingdept@mcmaster.ca if you are interested to attend.

Proposed background reading:

Körtvélyessy, L., Štekauer, P. and Zimmermann, J. 2015. Word-formation strategies: semantic transparency vs. formal economy. In L. Bauer, L. Körtvélyessy, and  P. Štekauer, (eds.), 2015. Semantics of Complex Words. Dordrecht: Springer, 85-114.

Štekauer, P. 2006. On The Meaning Predictability of Novel Context-Free Converted Naming Units. Linguistics 44/3: 489-539.

Title: Creativity in word-interpretation

Abstract: The talk draws on the psychological concepts of creative potential and creative performance in relation to the interpretation of complex words. Word-interpretation creativity is viewed  as a universal human ability which is differently realized by every language user. It will be claimed that word-interpretation creativity cannot be separated from word-formation  creativity. Therefore, an integrated onomasiological model of complex words will be introduced, which interconnects both of these areas, and a unified definition of complex word creativity will be formulated. The second part of the talk outlines the method of research into word-interpretation creativity. In particular, it discusses the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, including its six scores. The test was used to measure creative potential of our respondents. Creative performance was measured by (i) a complex word interpretation test based on the concept of meaning predictability, (ii) the average number of readings proposed by a cohort member, and (iii) the number of proposed hapax legomena. The final part of the talk will present selected results of the research with respect to the hypotheses specified at the beginning of the research project.