ERP evidence for conceptual mappings and comparison processes during the comprehension of conventional and novel metaphors

Abstract

Cognitive linguists suggest that understanding metaphors requires activation of conceptual mappings between the involved concepts. We tested whether mappings are indeed in use during metaphor comprehension, and what mapping means as a cognitive process with Event-Related Potentials. Participants read literal, conventional metaphorical, novel metaphorical, and anomalous target sentences preceded by primes with related or unrelated mappings. Experiment 1 used sentence-primes to activate related mappings, and Experiment 2 used simile-primes to induce comparison thinking. In the unprimed conditions of both experiments, metaphors elicited N400s more negative than the literals. In Experiment 1, related sentence-primes reduced the metaphor-literal N400 difference in conventional, but not in novel metaphors. In Experiment 2, related simile-primes reduced the metaphor-literal N400 difference in novel, but not clearly in conventional metaphors. We suggest that mapping as a process occurs in metaphors, and the ways in which it can be facilitated by comparison differ between conventional and novel metaphors.

The role of literal meaning in figurative language comprehension: evidence from masked priming ERP

“…The crucial distinction we want to point out is between verbal metaphors (cf. Lai et al, 2009; Lai and Curran, 2013) that elicited a monophasic N400 and nominal metaphors as in the current study that evoked a biphasic N400-Late Positivity pattern. This distinction would fit with the proposal that the Late Positivity reflects operations on discourse representation structure where costs accrue whenever a discourse referent is added to the discourse or must be modified (cf.…”

“…e.g., Coulson and Matlock, 2001; Croft, 2002; Wolff and Gentner, 2011; but see Lai and Curran, 2013, for the assignment of mapping processes to the N400), meaning construction via blending of cognitive models (cf. Fauconnier and Turner, 2002; Coulson and Oakley, 2005), the activation of secondary cognitive models (cf.…”

To electrify bilingualism: Electrophysiological insights into bilingual metaphor comprehension

“…Our first aim was to investigate whether metaphoric meanings would evoke more pronounced N400 amplitudes compared to literal word dyads in both languages. Such an effect has been previously observed in monolingual research and was interpreted as indicative of more resource intensive mappings required for metaphor comprehension when compared to literal utterance understanding [5,17,31]. Additionally, we wanted to examine whether conventionality would modulate the N400 effect in both languages.…”

“…Since novel metaphors require meaning construction, they involve lexico-semantic processes that are more taxing than those involved in meaning retrieval during conventional meaning comprehension. In addition, the fact that conventional metaphors elicited a larger N400 response than literal meanings might indicate that conventional metaphoric utterances, in spite of their high familiarity and frequency of use, require more resource intensive mappings between concepts than literal utterances [17,31]. …”

“…The tenets of the Career of Metaphor Model were also supported by Lai and Curran [31], who employed the priming paradigm, in which novel and conventional metaphoric sentences were primed by either sentence-primes ( A is B ) or simile-primes ( A is like B ). The findings showed that simile-primes, which initiate comparison processes, were effective in priming both novel and conventional metaphors, as reflected in reduced N400 amplitudes.…”