Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-12T22:16:51.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The moustache’ returns: referential metonymy acquisition in adult learners of English as an additional language (EAL)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2021

JOSEPHINE BOWERMAN Open the ORCID record for JOSEPHINE BOWERMAN [Opens in a new window] ,
INGRID LOSSIUS FALKUM  and
NAUSICAA POUSCOULOUS
JOSEPHINE BOWERMAN*
Affiliation:
University College London
INGRID LOSSIUS FALKUM
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas / Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo
NAUSICAA POUSCOULOUS
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Address for correspondence: Josephine Bowerman, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, LondonWC1N 1PF, United Kingdom. e-mail: josephine.bowerman.15@ucl.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Referential metonymy, e.g. ‘the moustache (= man with a moustache) sits down first’, appears early in L1 acquisition (Falkum, Recasens & Clark, 2017). Yet how does it emerge in pragmatically mature but linguistically developing adult L2 learners? We used one comprehension and two production tasks, based on Falkum and colleagues (2017), to investigate metonymy abilities in 34 Japanese adult learners of English as an additional language (EAL) and a control group of 31 native English speakers. We also examined how time constraints and exposure to examples of referential metonymy affected production. In the comprehension task, both EAL-learner and native-speaker participants chose metonymic readings at above chance levels. In both production tasks, all participants produced innovative metonyms. Additionally, the findings indicate that, in L2, exposure to examples dramatically increases metonymy production, while time pressure decreases it. The results suggest that participants can both comprehend and produce novel metonyms in L2, with a possible explicitness vs. production costs trade-off.

Keywords

metonymyL2 acquisitionreference-makingfigurative language
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 254 - 290
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

Thanks are due to: Marta Recasens for contributing to the photographs for the comprehension task; the staff and students at Chandler House for their invaluable assistance in preparing task materials; Professor Richard Breheny of UCL for his advice and support; the staff and teaching assistants of the Downing-Keio Summer School 2019, in particular Dr Kamran Yunus; and, above all, the Downing-Keio 2019 students. JB: ESRC Studentship; ILF: Research Council of Norway, Project No. 240324.

References

references

Barcelona, A. (2003). Clarifying and applying the notions of metaphor and metonymy within cognitive linguistics: an update. In Dirven, R. & Pörings, R. (eds), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (pp. 207–278). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M. & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a theory of mind? Cognition 21(1), 37–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bezuidenhout, A. (2019). Noun–noun compounds from the perspective of Relevance Theory. In Scott, K., Clark, B. & Carston, R. (eds), Relevance, pragmatics and interpretation (pp. 174–186). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhela, B. (1999). Native language interference in learning a second language: exploratory case studies of native language interference with target language usage. International Education Journal 1(1), 22–31.Google Scholar
Bowerman, J. (2019). What’s really going on with the ham sandwich? An investigation into the nature of referential metonymy. International Review of Pragmatics 11(1), 22–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. & Clark, H. H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55(4), 767–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W. (2006). On explaining metonymy: comment on Peirsman and Geeraerts, “Metonymy as a prototypical category”. Cognitive Linguistics 17(3), 317–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doherty, M. & Perner, J. (1998). Metalinguistic awareness and theory of mind: Just two words for the same thing? Cognitive Development 13(3), 279–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emura, K., Kimura, N., Lupsa, C. D., Kim, J., Yamaguchi, S., Hagiwara, H. & Yusa, N. (2014). On the acquisition of noun–noun compounds in Japanese. 東北大学国際文化研究 20, 17–29.Google Scholar
Falkum, I. L., Recasens, M. & Clark, E. V. (2017). “The moustache sits down first”: on the acquisition of metonymy. Journal of Child Language 44(1), 87–119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frisson, S. & Pickering, M. J. (2007). The processing of familiar and novel senses of a word: why reading Dickens is easy but reading Needham can be hard. Language and Cognitive Processes 22(4), 595–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. (1999). Speaking and thinking with metonymy. In Panther, K.-U. & Radden, G. (eds), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 61–76). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heine, B., Claudi, U. & Hünnemeyer, F. (1991). Grammaticalization: a conceptual framework. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. & Traugott, E. C. (1993). Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 434–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jiang, X. (2013). Referential metonymy: reference transfer and pragmatic motivations. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 25, 1–19.Google Scholar
Koch, P. (1999). Frame and contiguity: on the cognitive bases of metonymy and certain types of word formation. In Panther, K.-U. & Radden, G. (eds), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 139–167). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1993). Reference-point constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 4(1), 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moll, H. & Tomasello, M. (2006). Level 1 perspective‐taking at 24 months of age. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 24(3), 603–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onishi, K. H. & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science 308(5719), 255–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Panther, K-U & Thornburg, L. (1998). A cognitive approach to inferencing in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 30(6), 755–769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panther, K-U & Thornburg, L. (1999). The potentiality for actuality metonymy in English and Hungarian. In Panther, K.-U. & Radden, G. (eds), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 361–384). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panther, K.-U. & Thornburg, L. (2010). Metonymy. In Geeraerts, D. & Cuyckens, H. (eds), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 236–263). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Papafragou, A. (1996). On metonymy. Lingua 99(4), 169–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez Hernández, L. & Ruiz de Mendoza, F. J. (2002). Grounding, semantic motivation, and conceptual interaction in indirect directive speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics 34(3), 259–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabagliati, H., Marcus, G. F. & Pylkkänen, L. (2010). Shifting senses in lexical semantic development. Cognition 117(1), 17–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rebollar, B. E. (2015). A relevance-theoretic perspective on metonymy. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 173, 191–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumacher, P. B. (2011). The hepatitis called …: electrophysiological evidence for enriched composition. In Meibauer, J. & Steinbach, M. (eds), Experimental pragmatics/semantics (pp. 199–219). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumacher, P. B. (2014). Content and context in incremental processing: “The ham sandwich” revisited. Philosophical Studies 168(1), 151–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, W. (1995). Language acquisition and language variation: the role of morphology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Southgate, V., Senju, A. & Csibra, G. (2007). Action anticipation through attribution of false belief by 2-year-olds. Psychological Science 18(7), 587–592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sugisaki, K. & Isobe, M. (2000). Resultatives result from the compounding parameter: on the acquisitional correlation between resultatives and N-N compounds in Japanese. In Billerey, R. & Lillehaugen, B. D. (eds), Proceedings of WCCFL 19 (pp. 493–506). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Thornburg, L., & Panther, K-U (1997). Speech act metonymy. In Liebert, W. A., Redeker, G. & Waugh, L. R. (eds), Discourse and perspectives in cognitive linguistics (pp. 205–219). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, E. C. & König, E. (1991). The semantics–pragmatics of grammaticalization revisited. In Traugott, E. C. & Heine, B. (eds), Approaches to grammaticalization 1 (pp. 189–218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, B. (1999). Aspects of referential metonymy. In Panther, K.-U. & Radden, G. (eds), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 121–138). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, B. (2002). An alternative account of the interpretation of referential metonymy and metaphor. In Dirven, R. & Pörings, R. (eds), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (pp. 113–132). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Warren, B. (2004). Referential metonymy. Lund: Royal Society of Letters.Google Scholar
Wimmer, H. & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition 13(1), 103–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar