Most words have multiple meanings, but there are foundationally distinct accounts for this. Categorical theories posit that humans maintain discrete entries for distinct word meanings, as in a dictionary. Continuous ones eschew discrete sense representations, arguing that word meanings are best characterized as trajectories through a continuous state space. Both kinds of approach face empirical challenges. In response, we introduce two novel "hybrid" theories, which reconcile discrete sense representations with a continuous view of word meaning. We then report on two behavioral experiments, pairing them with an analytical approach relying on neural language models to test these competing accounts. The experimental results are best explained by one of the novel hybrid accounts, which posits both distinct sense representations and a continuous meaning space. This hybrid account accommodates both the dynamic, context-dependent nature of word meaning, as well as the behavioral evidence for category-like structure in human lexical knowledge. We further develop and quantify the predictive power of several computational implementations of this hybrid account. These results raise questions for future research on lexical ambiguity, such as why and when discrete sense representations might emerge in the first place. They also connect to more general questions about the role of discrete versus gradient representations in cognitive processes and suggest that at least in this case, the best explanation is one that integrates both factors: Word meaning is both categorical and continuous. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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词义既是绝对的又是连续的。

大多数单词都有多种含义，但对此有基本不同的解释。分类理论认为，人类为不同的单词含义维护离散的条目，就像在字典中一样。连续的词避开离散的意义表示，认为词义最好被描述为通过连续状态空间的轨迹。两种方法都面临着实证挑战。作为回应，我们引入了两种新颖的“混合”理论，它们将离散的意义表征与连续的词义视图相协调。然后，我们报告两个行为实验，将它们与依赖神经语言模型的分析方法配对来测试这些竞争帐户。实验结果可以通过一种新颖的混合帐户得到最好的解释，该帐户既假定了不同的意义表征，又假定了连续的意义空间。这种混合解释既适应了词义动态的、依赖于上下文的性质，也适应了人类词汇知识中类类别结构的行为证据。我们进一步开发并量化了该混合账户的几种计算实现的预测能力。这些结果为未来的词汇歧义研究提出了问题，例如为什么以及何时离散的意义表征可能首先出现。他们还涉及到关于认知过程中离散表示与梯度表示的作用的更普遍的问题，并表明至少在这种情况下，最好的解释是整合这两个因素的解释：词义既是分类的又是连续的。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。