Effects Of Familiarity And Different Categories Metaphors On Sentence Processing

As a common type of rhetorical device,metaphor has three explanations for its processing process: Standard Pragmatic Model,Parallel Hypothesis,and The Graded Salience Hypothesis.The predecessors usually used the familiarity effect of metaphor to investigate the processing of metaphorical sentences and literal sentences.In recent years,some researchers have found through f MRI and ERP experiments that there are differences in neural mechanisms between metaphors of different categories.This difference may be the cause of the controversy over metaphor processing mechanism.Therefore,this study uses eye movement technology to investigate the process of naturally reading metaphorical sentences in a natural way,and to explore the processing process and understanding mechanism of metaphorical sentences.Experiment 1compares the processing process of evoked metaphor and its corresponding metaphorical sentence,and investigates whether the understanding of metaphorical sentence needs to be rejected first.Experiment 1 is a design of 2(metaphoric familiarity: familiar metaphors,novel metaphors)× 2(metaphorical sentence pattern: metaphorical sentence,simile sentence).Among them,the experimental sentence pattern is the metaphorical sentence pattern of "A like / is B".Sentences of the same familiarity degree in the same group have no difference except for "is" and "like".The familiarity of the experimental materials is evaluated by the participants who do not participate in the formal experiment.In the same group of experimental materials,the familiarity score of sentences with high familiarity was subtracted from the sentence with low familiarity,and the difference between the two was higher than 1.Among them,sentences with higher scores are familiar metaphorical sentences,and those with lower scores are novel metaphorical sentences.The word frequency and stroke number of the experimental materials are matched and balanced.Experiment 2 compares the effects of familiarity on the processing of metaphorical sentences under different metaphorical properties to investigate whether the metaphorical sentence complies with The Graded Salience Hypothesis.Experiment 2 is a design within 2(categories of metaphors: derived metaphor,evoked metaphor)× 2(metaphoric familiarity: familiar metaphor,novel metaphor).Through the above experiments,it was found that:(1)Understanding of m Metaphorical sentence understanding does not require first access to literal meaning,but metaphorical meaning can be directly reached;(2)No effects of familiarity are found in evoked metaphor,which is consistent with Parallel Hypothesis;(3)There are stable effects in derived metaphor of familiarity,which is in line with The Graded Salience Hypothesis.In short,this shows that different categories of metaphors have different processing procedures.