Abstract
The role of literal meaning during the construction of meaning that goes beyond pure literal composition was investigated by combining cross-modal masked priming and ERPs. This experimental design was chosen to compare two conflicting theoretical positions on this topic. The indirect access account claims that literal aspects are processed first, and additional meaning components are computed only if no satisfactory interpretation is reached. In contrast, the direct access approach argues that figurative aspects can be accessed immediately. We presented metaphors (These lawyers are hyenas, Experiment 1a and 1b) and producer-for-product metonymies (The boy read Böll, Experiment 2a and 2b) with and without a prime word that was semantically relevant to the literal meaning of the target word (furry and talented, respectively). In the presentation without priming, metaphors revealed a biphasic N400-Late Positivity pattern, while metonymies showed an N400 only. We interpret the findings within a two-phase language architecture where contextual expectations guide initial access (N400) and precede pragmatic adjustment resulting in reconceptualization (Late Positivity). With masked priming, the N400-difference was reduced for metaphors and vanished for metonymies. This speaks against the direct access view that predicts a facilitating effect for the literal condition only and hence would predict the N400-difference to increase. The results are more consistent with indirect access accounts that argue for facilitation effects for both conditions and consequently for consistent or even smaller N400-amplitude differences. This combined masked priming ERP paradigm therefore yields new insights into the role of literal meaning in the online composition of figurative language.
Highlights
Human communication often requires the construction of meaning that goes beyond the pure compositional computation of the literal meaning of the single sentence components
The high expectation of any word that completes the sentence literally elicited a less pronounced N400-amplitude than the unexpected metaphorical completion with any word belonging to the metaphorical category
The statistical analysis revealed no reliable correlation for any of the three electrodes: Cz (Pearson’s r = 0.111, p = 0.598), the CPz (r = 0.161, p = 0.442) or the Pz (r = 0.167, p = 0.425). In this experiment, metaphors were presented within a masked priming paradigm to investigate the role of literal meaning during the lexical access phase of the critical word
Summary
Human communication often requires the construction of meaning that goes beyond the pure compositional computation of the literal meaning of the single sentence components. The comprehension of producer-for-product metonymy has been investigated behaviorally, indicating no processing effort (Bambini et al, 2013; see Frisson, 2009 for an overview) While this type of metonymy has not been tested using ERPs before, there are a number of existing studies on logical metonymy (The boy began the novel) and different types of nominal metonymies (content-container alternations: Tim put the beer on the table; Tom drank the bottle), including reference transfer like The ham sandwich wants to pay (Kuperberg et al, 2010; Schumacher, 2011, 2013, 2014). Experiment 1a and 2b and Experiment 1b and 2a were presented together in one session but for expository reasons, we presented them as Experiment 1 and 2 separately
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