Metaphor, metonymy, and their interaction in the production of semantic approximations by monolingual children: A corpus analysis

  1. Pérez-Hernández, L. 1
  2. Duvignau, K. 2
  1. 1 Universidad de La Rioja
    info

    Universidad de La Rioja

    Logroño, España

    ROR https://ror.org/0553yr311

  2. 2 University of Toulouse II - Le Mirail
    info

    University of Toulouse II - Le Mirail

    Tolosa, Francia

    ROR https://ror.org/04ezk3x31

Zeitschrift:
First Language

ISSN: 0142-7237

Datum der Publikation: 2016

Ausgabe: 36

Nummer: 4

Seiten: 383-406

Art: Artikel

DOI: 10.1177/0142723716648845 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-84978700984 WoS: WOS:000380909200002 GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Andere Publikationen in: First Language

Institutionelles Repository: lockOpen Access Editor

Zusammenfassung

The present study looks into the largely unexplored territory of the cognitive underpinnings of semantic approximations in child language. The analysis of a corpus of 233 semantic approximations produced by 101 monolingual French-speaking children from 1;8 to 4;2 years of age leads to a classification of a significant number of them as instances of a set of principle-governed cognitive operations, including metaphor and metonymy-based cognitive operations, and conceptual complexes, such as metaphtonymies and double metonymies. The results shed light on cognitive operation preferences and their level of conceptual complexity at this stage of language development. Additionally, it points to the need to expand the inventory of functions traditionally assigned to these cognitive operations. © SAGE Publications.