Idiomatic expressions can be interpreted literally or figuratively. These two meanings are often processed in parallel or very rapidly, as evidenced by online measures of idiomatic processing. Because in many cases the figurative meaning cannot be derived from the component lexical elements and because of the speed with which this meaning is accessed, it is assumed such meanings are stored in s...

The nature of putative semantic anomalies in schizophrenia is controversial. Metaphor interpretation and use provide a useful methodology with which to probe semantics since metaphors are critical in reasoning processes and in how conceptual knowledge is organized. The first study examined free speech for figurative language. The second study explored whether emotional versus non-emotional meta...

Proverbs were used to examine reci)gt~it ion memon f o r four wpes of sentence information U?guraticr meaning, literal meaning, lexical inforrnutinn, syntactic information) with n\.u li'vels of comprehension. Forced-choice recognition tasks showed that subjects were s u ~ ~ c i ' s . ~ j i ~ I in rernetnhering al l fi111r t\'pes of infi)rrnation. Recognition scores for the f i f i i rcuin' t u ...

Idioms are used in conventional language twice as frequently as metaphors, but most research, particularly recent work on embodiment has focused on the latter. However, idioms have the potential to significantly deepen our understanding of embodiment because their meanings cannot be derived from their component words. To determine whether sensorimotor states could activate idiomatic meaning, pa...

This study investigated causal coherence in people with Williams syndrome (WS). To advance our understanding of this clinical group, we examined their ability to make causal inferences, using their understanding of homonyms (words with the same spelling but distinct meanings) embedded in contexts. A minor goal was to use verbal stimuli to clarify Santos and Deruelle's (2009) findings on the kno...

The traditional theory of irony, which assumes that an ironist uses a figurative meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the utterance, is shown to be inadequate; an alternative theory is presented, which assumes that the ironist mentions the literal meaning of the utterance and expresses an attitude toward it. Although the implications for understanding irony are difficult to test, the two ...

the holy koran is the eternal miracle of literature and eloquence. in the field of eloquence, ellipsis is an important issue. grammaticaltadmeen as a type of ellipsis has a special manifestation in the holy koran. tazmeen literally meaning insertion is applied when a verb in the text adds the meaning of another verb to itself and is used as the other word should be used in terms of transitivity...

reading the arabian poems attributed to pre-islamic era, especially mu’allaqat, one constantly faces a widespread linguistic phenomenon that somehow impedes the process of understanding “the signified” and the meaning of the poems. this linguistic technique is characterized by deletion of the qualified and replacement of one or more qualifiers for it. the phenomenon is today discussed in some r...