Neural correlates of metonymy resolution

Rapp, Alexander; Erb, Michael; Grodd, Wolfgang; Bartels, M.; Markert, Katja

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2011.07.004

Cited by 27 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…No other comparisons at this ROI were significant. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that indeterminate sentences might engage greater RH resources than preferred sentences, and also consistent with studies that show R-IFG activation for metonymic sentences (e.g., Africa is hungry , Rapp et al, 2011), which arguably require pragmatic processes for recovering the proper interpretation of the subject noun. However, indeterminate sentences did not differ from non-preferred and full-VP sentences, suggesting that as constructions deviate from the canonical form, they show attenuated margins of differentiation with the indeterminate condition.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Bambini et al (2011) also found greater involvement of right superior temporal sulcus (STS) and middle FG in metaphor processing, suggesting that quintessential pragmatic processes engage different RH neural substrates—or engage them to a larger extent—when compared to literal language (see also Bottini et al, 1994; Kacinik and Chiarello, 2007) 3 . We see a similar pattern even in studies showing LH-dominance in the comprehension of metonymy (Rapp et al, 2011): the R-IFG shows significant activation for metonymic ( Hitchcock is worth watching ) expressions beyond what is required to activate literal expressions ( Hitchcock is dead ). Other forms of figurative language processing—such as irony and sarcasm—also suggest the activation of bilateral networks, with significant RH clusters compared to literal controls (for a review see Bohrn et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 83%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Neuronal Correlates of Indeterminate Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

Almeida

Riven

Manouilidou

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Sentences such as The author started the book are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun book to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) or at the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG). These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right inferior frontal gyrus (R-IFG), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), more so than control sentences (The author wrote the book). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences (…drank the book) and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 83%

The Neuronal Correlates of Indeterminate Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

Almeida

Riven

Manouilidou

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…A comparison of (6c) versus (6d) provides a test of the hypothesis that metonymic processing depends on sentence structure. Support for this hypothesis would help reconcile conflicting results on whether there is a processing cost associated with interpretation of metonyms (Frisson & Pickering, 1999, 2007; Ghio et al, 2012; Gibbs, 1990; Humphrey et al, 2004; McElree et al, 2006; Rapp et al, 2011; Weiland et al, 2012). In addition Experiment 2 tested whether interpreting familiar metonyms imposes a processing cost when compared to a different baseline.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

It’s hard to offend the college: Effects of sentence structure on figurative-language processing.

Lowder¹,

Gordon²

2013

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Previous research has given inconsistent evidence about whether familiar metonyms are more difficult to process than literal expressions. In two eye-tracking while reading experiments, we tested the hypothesis that the difficulty associated with processing metonyms would depend on sentence structure. Experiment 1 examined comprehension of familiar place-for-institution metonyms (e.g., college) when they were an argument of the main verb and showed that they are more difficult to process in a figurative context (e.g., offended the college) than in a literal context (e.g., photographed the college). Experiment 2 demonstrated that when they are arguments of the main verb, familiar metonyms are more difficult to process than frequency-and-length-matched nouns that refer to people (e.g., offended the leader), but that this difficulty was reduced when the metonym appeared as part of an adjunct phrase (e.g., offended the honor of the college). The results support the view that figurative-language processing is moderated by sentence structure. When the metonym was an argument of the verb, the results were consistent with the pattern predicted by the indirect-access model of figurative-language comprehension. In contrast, when the metonym was part of an adjunct phrase, the results were consistent with the pattern predicted by the direct-access model.

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“…This said, Rapp et al (2011) do report on decontextualized metonymy comprehension, which we take as an initial guide to our localization predictions. Rapp et al (2011) present metonymies such as "Africa is hungry," in which a causal link (supplied by historical information expected to be known by the comprehender) must be created to connect the geographic designation of Africa with its inhabitants.…”

Section: Previous Work On Metonymymentioning

confidence: 98%

Metonymy as Referential Dependency: Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Arguments for a Unified Linguistic Treatment

et al. 2016

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We examine metonymy at psycho- and neurolinguistic levels, seeking to adjudicate between two possible processing implementations (one- vs. two-mechanism). We compare highly conventionalized systematic metonymy (producer-for-product: "All freshmen read O'Connell") to lesser-conventionalized circumstantial metonymy ("[a waitress says to another:] 'Table 2 asked for more coffee."'). Whereas these two metonymy types differ in terms of contextual demands, they each reveal a similar dependency between the named and intended conceptual entities (e.g., Jackendoff, 1997; Nunberg, 1979, 1995). We reason that if each metonymy yields a distinct processing time course and substantially non-overlapping preferential localization pattern, it would not only support a two-mechanism view (one lexical, one pragmatic) but would suggest that conventionalization acts as a linguistic categorizer. By contrast, a similar behavior in time course and localization would support a one-mechanism view and the inference that conventionalization acts instead as a modulator of contextual felicitousness, and that differences in interpretation introduced by conventionalization are of degree, not of kind. Results from three paradigms: self-paced reading (SPR), event-related potentials (ERP), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), reveal the following: no main effect by condition (metonymy vs. matched literal control) for either metonymy type immediately after the metonymy trigger, and a main effect for only the Circumstantial metonymy one word post-trigger (SPR); a N400 effect across metonymy types and a late positivity for Circumstantial metonymy (ERP); and a highly overlapping activation connecting the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (fMRI). Altogether, the pattern observed does not reach the threshold required to justify a two-mechanism system. Instead, the pattern is more naturally (and conservatively) understood as resulting from the implementation of a generalized referential dependency mechanism, modulated by degree of context dependence/conventionalization, thus supporting architectures of language whereby "lexical" and "pragmatic" meaning relations are encoded along a cline of contextual underspecification.

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Neural correlates of metonymy resolution

Cited by 27 publications

References 59 publications

The Neuronal Correlates of Indeterminate Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

The Neuronal Correlates of Indeterminate Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

It’s hard to offend the college: Effects of sentence structure on figurative-language processing.

Metonymy as Referential Dependency: Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Arguments for a Unified Linguistic Treatment

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