Department of Psychology, Northwestern University.
Cogn Sci. 2022 May;46(5):e13141. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13141.
This paper explores the processes underlying verb metaphoric extension. Work on metaphor processing has largely focused on noun metaphor, despite evidence that verb metaphor is more common. Across three experiments, we collected paraphrases of simple intransitive sentences varying in semantic strain-for example, The motor complained → The engine made strange noises-and assessed the degree of meaning change for the noun and the verb. We developed a novel methodology for this assessment using word2vec. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that (a) under semantic strain, verb meanings were more likely to be adjusted than noun meanings; (b) the degree of verb meaning adjustment-but not noun meaning adjustment-increased with semantic strain; and (c) verb meaning extension is primarily driven by online adjustment, although sense selection also plays a role. In Experiment 3, we replicated the word2vec results with an assessment using human subjects. The results further showed that nouns and verbs change meaning in qualitatively different ways, with verbs more likely to change meaning metaphorically and nouns more likely to change meaning taxonomically or metonymically. These findings bear on the origin and processing of verb metaphors and provide a link between online sentence processing and diachronic change over language evolution.
本文探讨了动词隐喻扩展的背后过程。尽管有证据表明动词隐喻更为常见，但隐喻处理的研究主要集中在名词隐喻上。在三个实验中，我们收集了语义变化程度不同的简单不及物动词句子的释义，例如“发动机抱怨”→“发动机发出奇怪的声音”，并评估了名词和动词的语义变化程度。我们使用 word2vec 开发了一种新的评估方法。在实验 1 和实验 2 中，我们发现：（a）在语义变化下，动词的意义比名词的意义更有可能被调整；（b）动词意义调整的程度（而不是名词意义调整的程度）随语义变化而增加；（c）动词意义扩展主要是由在线调整驱动的，尽管意义选择也发挥了作用。在实验 3 中，我们使用人类受试者的评估复制了 word2vec 的结果。结果进一步表明，名词和动词以不同的方式改变意义，动词更有可能以隐喻的方式改变意义，而名词更有可能以分类或转喻的方式改变意义。这些发现与动词隐喻的起源和处理有关，并为在线句子处理与语言进化过程中的历时变化之间提供了联系。
