Preschoolers’ acquisition of producer-product metonymy

Abstract

Many words carry multiple distinct but related senses. For example, a producer’s name (e.g., Picasso) can be metonymically extended to label products (e.g., Picasso’s paintings) but rarely refer to other associated items (e.g., Picasso’s paintbrushes). We test whether item-based linguistic experience is necessary for children’s acquisition of semantic generalizations. In Experiment 1, we present 4- to 5-year-olds, 8- to 9-year-olds, and adults with scenarios involving novel and conventional artists’ names (e.g., Dax or Picasso) and a metonymic extension of the name that could refer to either artists’ products or tools. We find that the tendency to choose the product as the metonymic referent is present in 4- and 5-year-olds, increases with age, and is stronger for conventional, as opposed to novel, names. In follow-up experiments, we replicate 4- and 5-year-olds’ tendency to choose the product as the metonymic referent, when the metonyms are conventional artists’ names (e.g., Picasso), multi-syllabic novel names (e.g., Zazapa), familiar names (e.g., Smith), and conventional names that are rarely, if ever, used metonymically (e.g., Mandela). We also show that preschoolers do not possess explicit knowledge of conventional artists. Overall, these findings suggest that young children acquire producer-product metonymy without much, if any, prior experience with producers’ names. We discuss the implications of these findings for conceptual and usage-based accounts of the acquisition of semantic generalizations.