In this article, we discuss multiple types of meaningful (semantic) relations underlying abstract (as compared to concrete) concepts. We adopt the viewpoint that words act as cues to meaning (Elman in Ment Lexicon 6(1):1–34, 2011; Lupyan and Lewis in Lang Cogn Neurosci 34(10):1319–1337, 2019), which is dependent on the dynamic contents of a comprehender’s mental model of the situation. This view foregrounds the importance of both linguistic and real-world context as individuals make sense of words, flexibly access relevant knowledge, and understand described events and situations. We discuss theories of, and experimental work on, abstract concepts through the lens of the importance of thematic and other semantic relations. We then tie these findings to the sentence processing literature in which such meaningful relations within sentential contexts are often experimentally manipulated. In this literature, some specific classes/types of abstract words have been studied, although not comprehensively, and with limited connection to the literature on knowledge underlying abstract concepts reviewed herein. We conclude by arguing that the ways in which humans understand relatively more abstract concepts, in particular, can be informed by the careful study of words presented not in isolation, but rather in situational and linguistic contexts, and as a function of individual differences in knowledge, goals, and beliefs.

在本文中，我们讨论了抽象（与具体）概念相关的多种类型的有意义（语义）关系。我们采用这样的观点，即词语作为意义的线索（Elman in Ment Lexicon 6(1):1–34, 2011；Lupyan and Lewis in Lang Cogn Neurosci 34(10):1319–1337, 2019），这取决于情境理解者心智模型的动态内容。这种观点突出了语言和现实世界背景的重要性，因为个人可以理解词语、灵活地获取相关知识并理解所描述的事件和情况。我们通过主题和其他语义关系的重要性来讨论抽象概念的理论和实验工作。然后，我们将这些发现与句子处理文献联系起来，在这些文献中，句子上下文中的这种有意义的关系通常是通过实验来操纵的。在该文献中，已经研究了一些特定类别/类型的抽象词，尽管并不全面，并且与本文回顾的抽象概念基础知识文献的联系有限。我们的结论是，人类理解相对更抽象的概念的方式，尤其是可以通过仔细研究不是孤立地出现，而是在情境和语言语境中出现的词语，并作为知识个体差异的函数来了解、目标和信念。并且与此处审查的抽象概念基础知识文献的联系有限。我们的结论是，人类理解相对更抽象的概念的方式，尤其是可以通过仔细研究不是孤立地出现，而是在情境和语言语境中出现的词语，并作为知识个体差异的函数来了解、目标和信念。并且与此处审查的抽象概念基础知识文献的联系有限。我们的结论是，人类理解相对更抽象的概念的方式，尤其是可以通过仔细研究不是孤立地出现，而是在情境和语言语境中出现的词语，并作为知识个体差异的函数来了解、目标和信念。