Linguistics ETDs

Publication Date

5-1-2010

Abstract

Two of the major claims of the cognitivist approach to metaphor, the paradigm which has emerged as dominant over the last three decades, are 1) that metaphor is a conceptual, rather than strictly linguistic, phenomenon, and 2) that metaphor exemplifies processes which are at work in cognition more generally. This view of metaphor is here placed within the context of the functionalist approach to language, which asserts that linguistic structure is emergent in nature, the use of language directly influencing the storage and representation thereof. The dissertation argues that metaphors, as conventionalized cognitive structures, are themselves highly influenced by frequency effects, and that metaphorical cross-domain mappings exist in the mind as conceptual schemata. Two corpus-based methods for assessing the frequency of overall metaphorical mappings are presented, both based on the use of key terms, attained using a survey method, for metaphorical source domains. These findings inform the hypotheses of a series of three experiments which test three key predictions of the view that metaphors are affected by frequency: that frequent metaphors should be more productive, accessible, and acceptable than infrequent ones. Both the corpus and experimental approaches, as well as data from previous research on metaphor at varying levels of conventionalization, support the view that metaphors are a usage-based phenomenon. The properties of various types of metaphorical utterances (e.g., idioms and novel metaphors) are best accounted for as arising from the interaction of the conceptual schemata that license cross-domain mappings, and syntactic schemata that link meanings to syntactic templates.

Language

English

Keywords

metaphor, idiom, functional, usage-based, frequency, exemplar

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Linguistics

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Department of Linguistics

First Committee Member (Chair)

Bybee, Joan

Second Committee Member

Cameron, Lynne

Third Committee Member

Croft, William

Fourth Committee Member

Morford, Jill

Comments

Submitted by Daniel Sanford (dsanford@unm.edu) on 2010-04-14T06:27:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Sanford_Dissertation.pdf: 4414609 bytes, checksum: 28dee318b41183f47bc389a1626cba2f (MD5), Approved for entry into archive by Doug Weintraub(dwein@unm.edu) on 2010-06-28T22:45:21Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Sanford_Dissertation.pdf: 4414609 bytes, checksum: 28dee318b41183f47bc389a1626cba2f (MD5), Made available in DSpace on 2010-06-28T22:45:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sanford_Dissertation.pdf: 4414609 bytes, checksum: 28dee318b41183f47bc389a1626cba2f (MD5)

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