Meir Irit, Cohen Ariel
Department of Hebrew Language, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jun 26;9:1025. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01025. eCollection 2018.
Metaphor abounds in both sign and spoken languages. However, in sign languages, languages in the visual-manual modality, metaphors work a bit differently than they do in spoken languages. In this paper we explore some of the ways in which metaphors in sign languages differ from metaphors in spoken languages. We address three differences: (a) Some metaphors are very common in spoken languages yet are infelicitous in sign languages; (b) Body-part terms are possible in very specific types of metaphors in sign languages, but are not so restricted in spoken languages; (c) Similes in some sign languages are dispreferred in predicative positions in which metaphors are fine, in contrast to spoken languages where both can appear in these environments. We argue that these differences can be explained by two seemingly unrelated principles: the Double Mapping Constraint (Meir, 2010), which accounts for the interaction between metaphor and iconicity in languages, and Croft's (2003) constraint regarding the autonomy and dependency of elements in metaphorical constructions. We further argue that the study of metaphor in the signed modality offers novel insights concerning the nature of metaphor in general, and the role of figurative speech in language.
隐喻在手势语和口语中都大量存在。然而，在手势语这种视觉-手动模态的语言中，隐喻的运作方式与口语中的有所不同。在本文中，我们探讨手势语中的隐喻与口语中的隐喻存在差异的一些方式。我们阐述三个差异：（a）有些隐喻在口语中非常常见，但在手势语中却不合适；（b）身体部位术语在手势语中特定类型的隐喻中是可行的，但在口语中没有如此受限；（c）与口语中隐喻和明喻都可以出现在这些环境中不同，在某些手势语中，明喻在隐喻合适的谓语位置上不受青睐。我们认为，这些差异可以由两个看似不相关的原则来解释：双重映射限制（迈尔，2010），它解释了语言中隐喻与象似性之间的相互作用，以及克罗夫特（2003）关于隐喻结构中元素的自主性和依存性的限制。我们进一步认为，对手势语模态中隐喻的研究为隐喻的一般性质以及比喻性语言在语言中的作用提供了新的见解。
