Metaphorical expressions very often involve words referring to physical entities and experiences. Yet, figures of speech such as metaphors are not intended to be understood literally, word-by-word. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to determine whether metaphorical expressions are processed more like physical or more like abstract expressions. To this end, novel adjective-noun word ...

In the standard version of conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors are stable connected structures in the conceptual system that emerge either because there is some similarity between two domains of experience (resemblance-based metaphors) or because the two domains are correlated in bodily experience (correlation-based metaphors). I propose that in addition to these two types of metaphor there i...

The right hemisphere's role in language comprehension is supported by results from several neuropsychology and neuroimaging studies. Special interest surrounds right temporoparietal structures, which are thought to be involved in processing novel metaphorical expressions, primarily due to the coarse semantic coding of concepts. In this event related fMRI experiment we aimed at assessing the ext...

This paper addresses two issues: (1) what it is for a metaphor to be either alive or dead and (2) what a metaphor must be in order to be either alive or dead. Both issues, in turn, bear on the contemporary debate whether metaphor is a pragmatic or semantic phenomenon and on the dispute between Contextualists and Literalists. In the first part of the paper, I survey examples of what I take to be...

A common problem for linguists, philosophers and psychologists is that linguistically specified (‘literal’) word meanings are often modified in use. The literal meaning may be narrowed (e.g. drink used to mean ‘alcoholic drink’), approximated (e.g. square used to mean ‘squarish’) or undergo metaphorical extension (e.g. rose or diamond applied to a person). Typically, narrowing, approximation an...

In gesturing metaphorically, people use physical space to represent abstract ideas that have no spatial instantiation in the world (e.g., gesturing upward to indicate high intelligence). This volume illustrates the range of metaphorical gestures that people produce, yet researchers have only just begun to explore the psychological significance of these gestures. What functions might they serve ...

Urdu is a New Indo-Aryan language which uses case markers to express differing semantic functions. The case marker ko marks accusative and dative. It is also used to express a few other spatial and temporal functions. We have studied a variety of semantic usages of ko and propose an unifying explantion of all the diverse usages. We assume that it originated as a spatial postposition from a Sans...

It is generally accepted that much of everyday language shows evidence of metaphor. We assume a common sense knowledge of the real world in the understanding of metaphorical utterances. We do not address the issue of when an utterance is to be considered metaphorical. Instead, we provide an explanation of how a mtephorical utterance can be processed. Consider the following example: (1) “In the ...

We consider the varieties and directions of influence that the source and target domains involved in a conceptual metaphor can have on each other during the course of understanding metaphorical utterances based on the metaphor. Previous studies have been restricted both as to direction of influence and as to type of influence. They have been largely confined to the “forward” (source to target) ...