Lexicalization Degree of Figurative Meaning Affects the Mental Organization of Body-Related Metaphorical Words in Chinese

Aitao Lu, John X. Zhang, Lei Mo, Jijia Zhang, Yuxiao Dang and Jinwang Yu

International Journal of Psychological Studies, 2010, vol. 2, issue 2, 136

Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to examine how body-related Chinese metaphorical words are organizedwhen the degree of lexicalization is taken into consideration. Three experiments were conducted usingmultidimensional scaling (MDS) and a priming paradigm. The results in Exp. 1 and 2 indicated that thedispersion of metaphorical words was influenced by degree of lexicalization to produce a clear separationbetween a cluster of highly lexicalized metaphorical words (HM) and a cluster of body-part words (BW) withpartially lexicalized metaphorical words (LM) scattering between these two clusters. Semantic priming effectbased on a word’s literal meaning was then assessed in Exp. 3 by contrasting a picture-word match conditionwith a picture-word mismatch condition using these three types of words. Significant positive priming effect wasfound for the BW words but not the LM words, while a reversed inhibitory effect was found for the HM words.Briefly, with the direct evidence from Exp. 1 and 2 showing a unique dispersion in the Euclidean distance mapand the indirect evidence from Exp. 3 revealing the existence of literal meanings for the LM but not the HMwords, this study showed that metaphorical words are organized based on their degree of lexicalization.

Date: 2010
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