Abstract:

This study systematically examined the activation and interaction between concrete and abstract semantic representations in the processing of verbal metaphors in Chinese via two experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that understanding verbal metaphors facilitated semantic judgments of related abstract verbs. In Experiment 2, during the predicate processing stage, verb-object metaphorical sentences elicited an N400 effect similar to that observed in concrete sentences, whereas subject-predicate metaphorical sentences elicited a P600/LPC effect resembling that found in abstract sentences. Moreover, subject-predicate metaphorical sentences induced a significantly larger P600/LPC amplitude than verb-object metaphorical sentences. During the object processing stage, both types of metaphorical sentences elicited significantly larger P600/LPC amplitudes than literal sentences, although no significant difference was found between the two metaphorical sentence types. These findings suggest that the comprehension of verbal metaphors involves a co-activation mechanism of concrete and abstract semantics. Furthermore, the timing of literal meaning conflict plays a regulatory role in the activation dynamics of these semantic representations.

Key words: sensorimotor simulation, abstract semantics, ERP, verbal metaphor

摘要：

本研究通过两个实验，系统考察动词隐喻加工过程中具体语义与抽象语义的激活及其相互作用机制。实验1结果表明，动词隐喻理解促进了对语义相关抽象动词的判断。实验2结果表明，在谓语加工阶段，动−宾结构隐喻句引起了类似于具体句的N400效应，而主−谓结构隐喻句则表现出与抽象句相似的P600/LPC效应，且相较于动−宾结构隐喻句，主−谓结构隐喻句诱发了更大的P600/LPC效应。在宾语阶段，两类隐喻句均诱发了显著大于字面语义句的P600/LPC波幅，但二者之间在该成分上的差异不显著。本研究表明，动词隐喻的加工依赖于具体语义与抽象语义的协同激活机制，且字面语义冲突出现的时间点对两类语义表征的激活时程具有调节作用。

关键词: 感觉运动模拟, 抽象语义, ERP, 动词隐喻