Nayak N P, Gibbs R W
Program in Experimental Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz 95064.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 1990 Sep;119(3):315-30. doi: 10.1037//0096-3445.119.3.315.
The authors examined how people determine the contextual appropriateness of idioms. In Experiment 1, idioms referring to the same temporal stage of a conceptual prototype were judged to be more similar in meaning than idioms referring to different temporal stages. In Experiment 2, idioms in a prototypical temporal sequence were more meaningful than idioms in sentences that violated the temporal sequence. In Experiment 3, idioms referring to the same stage of a conceptual prototype were differentiable on the basis of conceptual information. The conceptual coherence between idioms and contexts facilitated the processing speed of idioms in Experiment 4. Experiment 5 showed that speakers can recover the underlying conceptual metaphors that link an idiom to its figurative meaning. Experiment 6 showed that the metaphoric information reflected in the lexical makeup of idioms also determined the metaphoric appropriateness of idioms in certain contexts.
作者们研究了人们如何确定习语在语境中的恰当性。在实验1中，与指代概念原型不同时间阶段的习语相比，指代概念原型同一时间阶段的习语在意义上被判定为更相似。在实验2中，处于典型时间顺序的习语比违反时间顺序的句子中的习语更有意义。在实验3中，指代概念原型同一阶段的习语基于概念信息是可区分的。在实验4中，习语与语境之间的概念连贯性促进了习语的处理速度。实验5表明，说话者能够恢复将习语与其比喻意义联系起来的潜在概念隐喻。实验6表明，习语词汇构成中所反映的隐喻信息在某些语境中也决定了习语的隐喻恰当性。
