Several studies have investigated the comprehension of decontextualized English nominal metaphors. However, not much is known about how contextualized, non-nominal, non-English metaphors are processed, and how this might inform existing theories of metaphor comprehension. In the current work, we investigate the effects of context and of sequential order for an under-studied type of construction: German verb–object metaphors. In two visual-world, eye-tracking experiments, we manipulated whether a discourse context biased a spoken target utterance toward a metaphoric or a literal interpretation. We also manipulated the order of verb and object in the target utterances (e.g., Stefan interviewt eine Hyäne, ‘Stefan interviews a hyena’, verb→object; and Stefan wird eine Hyäne interviewen, ‘Stefan will a hyena interview’, object→verb). Experiment 1 shows that contextual cues interacted with sequential order, mediating the processing of verb–object metaphors: When the context biased toward a metaphoric interpretation, participants readily understood the object metaphorically for the verb→object sequence, whereas they likely first understood it literally for the object→verb sequence. Crucially, no such effect of sequential order was found when context biased toward a literal interpretation. Experiment 2 suggests that differences in processing found in Experiment 1 were brought on by the interaction of discourse context and sequential order and not by sequential order alone. We propose ways in which existing theoretical views could be extended to account for these findings. Overall, our study shows the importance of context during figurative language comprehension and highlights the need to test the predictions of metaphor theories on non-English and non-nominal metaphors.

Words used to describe emotion are influenced by experience, context and culture; nevertheless, research studies often constrain participant response options. We explored the influence of response options on how people conceptualise emotion words in two cross-sectional studies. In Study 1 participants rated the degree to which a large set of emotion words (n = 497) fit five basic emotion categories – Happy, Sad, Angry, Fearful, Neutral. Twenty-four words that fit well within these categories were included in Study 2. In Study 2 response options were expanded to include two additional basic emotions (Disgust, Joy), and six complex emotions (Amusement, Anxiety, Contentment, Irritated, Pride, Relief). Only half of the Study 1 words were categorised into the same emotion categories in Study 2. An increase in diversity of ratings for both positive and negative valenced words suggested overlaps in people’s conceptualisations of emotion words. Results suggest potential benefits of providing research participants complex emotion categories of varying intensity, which may better reflect people’s nuanced conceptualisations of emotion. Future research exploring varied response options may provide further insight into how people categorise and differentiate emotion words.

A common feature of discourse coherence is hierarchical organization: more generally, central relations (characterizing the overall topic or goal) dominate complementary or modifying relations. In this hierarchy, higher levels tend to be marked by stronger prosodic cues than lower levels. This study seeks to understand how such a system emerges in human communication – what is present at the outset, and what takes time to develop. Specifically, we investigate whether the conceptualization of hierarchical organization precedes overt linguistic structuring, and whether distinct types and strengths of prosodic marking at different hierarchical levels can be discerned in the process of emergence. The only empirical evidence for such an investigation comes from sign languages, because they can arise de novo at any time. Sign languages offer the additional advantage of directly linking instantiations of linguistic structure to articulations of different visually perceived bodily articulators. Our study of a young sign language, Israeli Sign Language (ISL), finds that conceptual hierarchical structuring of discourse arises very early. However, the organization of bodily articulators to linguistically mark hierarchical information takes time to emerge: Younger ISL signers use smaller, less salient articulators at lower levels of the hierarchy compared to older signers.

Children’s processing and comprehension of metonymy have received little attention in the developmental literature, which has mainly focused on children’s acquisition of metaphor abilities. However, it has been found that metonymy production and comprehension precede metaphor production and comprehension (Falkum et al., 2017; Nerlich et al., 1999; Pérez-Hernández & Duvignau, 2016; Runblad & Annaz, 2010). Nerlich et al. (1999) suggest that metonymic relations are exploited in overextensions produced by children up to age 2;5 and call these “compelled metonymic overextensions”. At this very early age, a child’s vocabulary is still relatively small, and this compels them to extend already known words to cope with their increasing communicative needs. These overextensions are, however, in most cases not random, as some type of associative relation (e.g., cause–effect, object–act, container–content, etc.) between the concepts referred to can be identified. This study focuses on the metonymic relations exploited by 18 Afrikaans-speaking infants and toddlers (between the ages of 0;6 and 2;0) in their early overextensions. The metonymic relations as described by Norrick (1981) as well as Radden and Kövecses (1999) are employed in the analysis. A total of 207 out of 1371 one-word utterances were identified as compelled metonymic overextensions and 11 types of metonymic relations could be identified as underlying these utterances. This study illustrates that the metonymic relations identified in such young children’s early language provide insight and understanding into how they categorise and associate various concepts with each other.

The task of finding a case type that, on average, enhances the processing of verbal material has yielded mixed results in the literature. This study tackled this issue with an eye to the issue of processing textual information on road signs and the additional consideration of readers’ attentive states. Participants (n = 104) completed three experiments, the first two of which made use of both short (i.e., attentive state) and long (i.e., nonattentive or mind-wandering state) inter-trial intervals (ITIs). Experiment I consisted of a living versus non-living category-decision task involving the presentation of single words. Experiment II consisted of a sensical versus nonsensical sentence-judgment task. Experiment III consisted of a recognition memory task for words presented during the category-decision task. No significant difference in letter-case-type effectiveness was found for either the semantic categorization of or memory for single words. On the other hand, sensical sentences were correctly judged more quickly in lower case (or, more precisely, sentence case with the first letter of the first word capitalized). Such results point to either a more fluent processing of or enhanced conceptual resonance for sentences presented in lower case.

While anecdotal evidence suggests that music may facilitate verbal memory, empirical evidence for this is less clear. Here, we examined whether learners’ characteristics such as age, working memory (WM), and musical training may influence the effect of music on word learning. Young and older adults learned novel word-referent mappings presented in three music conditions (spoken in the presence of background music, sung in-key, and sung out-of-key) and a control condition (spoken in quiet) and their performance was assessed immediately after learning. We found that whereas age and, to an extent, musical training had a general effect on word learning, WM modulated the effect of music: performance was worse in the music conditions relative to the control condition for learners with lower WM whereas the opposite pattern was observed for those with higher WM. Our results thus highlight the importance of considering individual characteristics in determining the effect of music on verbal memory.

The neurocognition of multimodal interaction – the embedded, embodied, predictive processing of vocal and non-vocal communicative behaviour – has developed into an important subfield of cognitive science. It leaves a glaring lacuna, however, namely the dearth of a precise investigation of the meanings of the verbal and non-verbal communication signals that constitute multimodal interaction. Cognitively construable dialogue semantics provides a detailed and context-aware notion of meaning, and thereby contributes content-based identity conditions needed for distinguishing syntactically or form-based defined multimodal constituents. We exemplify this by means of two novel empirical examples: dissociated uses of negative polarity utterances and head shaking, and attentional clarification requests addressing speaker/hearer roles. On this view, interlocutors are described as co-active agents, thereby motivating a replacement of sequential turn organisation as a basic organising principle with notions of leading and accompanying voices. The Multimodal Serialisation Hypothesis is formulated: multimodal natural language processing is driven in part by a notion of vertical relevance – relevance of utterances occurring simultaneously – which we suggest supervenes on sequential (‘horizontal’) relevance – relevance of utterances succeeding each other temporally.

This paper investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying eating and drinking metaphors in Mongolian and discusses complex linguistic features of some culturally unique idioms relating to id- ‘eat’ and uu- ‘drink’, which are interpreted from a sociocultural perspective, along with the help of world knowledge. Metaphorical extensions of id- and uu- fall into three subcategories: (1) agent-oriented extensions, highlighting the consumer’s role in the source domain of eating and drinking; (2) patient-oriented extensions, focusing on destructive effects on the patient in the source domain; (3) extensions involving both agent and patient orientations, describing the agent’s sensation and “destruction” of the patient at the same time. Based on the Mongolian Web Corpus (mnWac16) and an extensive online dictionary (mongoltoli.mn), it is found that patient-oriented extensions tend to be more connected with EAT verbs in Mongolian, denoting a range of extensions like overcoming of the patient, spending material wealth, psychological torment or destruction, corrosion caused by external factors, etc., while agent-oriented extensions are more likely to involve DRINK verbs, denoting ‘smoking’, receiving material wealth (e.g., earning money) and absorption of such liquids as ink or oil. Overall, id- has a broader extension than uu-, and there are some overlaps involving both agent and patient orientations in terms of living on material wealth and physical exploitation. Some common usages pertaining to metaphorical extensions of consumption verbs are found cross-linguistically.