Metaphorical Motion in Linguistic Context: Processing in English and Spanish

摘要

For both literal and metaphorical motion, languages like English tend to express path in the satellite following the main verb of the sentence, freeing the verb to convey manner of motion information. In contrast, languages like Spanish tend to express path of motion in the main verb and less often directly convey manner of motion. Interestingly, theories about metaphor processing differ in the emphasis they give to cross-linguistic differences. In two studies, the current investigation examined 60 (30 English-speaking, 30 Spanish-speaking) adult participants' judgments about and reaction times for literal and metaphorical motion in familiar phrases (Experiment 1) as well as novel motion event metaphors (Experiment 2). Results suggest that English speakers both more frequently identified familiar metaphorical sentences when they included a manner verb and were faster at making these judgments than were Spanish speakers. With novel metaphors, English speakers picked the literal match at a proportionally greater rate than did Spanish speakers and did so more slowly than did Spanish speakers when sentences contained a path verb. These results indicate that English and Spanish speakers approach the task of interpreting metaphors in different ways depending on the type of verb that is used in the sentence.