Theories on metaphor and metonymy make different claims about the nature of the underlying processes in the computation of these two types of language use, i.e., whether they differ or not. Experimental investigations of metonymy and metaphor have generally not compared these two phenomena in a straightforward manner among others due to structural variability. To overcome this shortcoming, we conducted a study in German that used adjective–noun combinations to contrast metaphor and metonymy directly in an ERP-study during reading for comprehension. By combining three different nouns with one adjective in predicative position we construed adjective–noun pairs with literal (the baby was lively), metonymic (the eyes were lively) or metaphoric (the speed was lively) relations. The data revealed a more pronounced N400 for the metaphoric relations in comparison to the literal controls. We argue that the enhanced cost for metaphors reflects the activation process of two unrelated domains via mapping or extended ...

中文翻译：

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形容词-名词对中转喻和隐喻关系的直接比较

关于隐喻和转喻的理论对这两种语言使用的计算中的基本过程的性质有不同的主张，即它们是否不同。由于结构变异性，对转喻和隐喻的实验研究通常没有以直接的方式比较这两种现象。为了克服这个缺点，我们用德语进行了一项研究，该研究在阅读过程中使用形容词-名词组合直接在ERP研究中对比隐喻和转喻。通过将三个不同的名词与处于谓语位置的一个形容词结合起来，我们可以构造出形容词-名词对，它们具有文字（婴儿是活泼的），转喻（眼睛是活泼的）或隐喻（速度是活泼的）的关系。数据显示，与文字控件相比，N400的隐喻关系更为明显。我们认为，隐喻的成本增加反映了通过映射或扩展...两个不相关域的激活过程。