The Evolution

The Evolution

51

that ball has a whole-to-whole link with each of these concepts.
Unfortunately, it cannot be that simple as a sentence such as Cinder-
ella went to the ball would then set up in memory a Type III situation,
with the concept "Cinderella" and the word ball each tending to yield
by whole-to-whole link the concept "dance." That would mean that the
meaning "dance" might very well not be yielded, since Type III situa-
tions, unlike Type II situations, cannot be relied upon to yield an
intersected concept. And since clearly the above sentence causes no
such problem, it follows that a Type II intersection must be taking
place. Accordingly, ball must have a part-whole link with ball in the
sense of "dance" and another with ball in the sense of "round object,"
each of which must in turn be linked by whole-to-whole link to its
general concept. Thus when ball is perceived, it is first disambiguated
as either the word ball(dance) or ball(round object), then a
whole-to-whole link from one of these yields the corresponding general
concept, and that concept is disambiguated.

It follows that Type II intersections may cascade (cf. Anderson &
Ortony, 1975, p. 178) in the sense that a Type II intersection might
first be used to disambiguate a word and then be used to disambiguate
the general concept denoted by that word. Thus, upon hearing or seeing
the phrase Yankee pitcher, memory could use the whole-to-whole links of
"Yankee" to disambiguate pitcher as pitcher(baseball)—as opposed to

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