Novel metaphor recognition in L1 and L2 as mediated by syntactic foregrounding: an eye movement study

Вопросы когнитивной лингвистики (Российская Федерация). 2022. No. 4. P. 83–91.

Rzheshevskaya A. A., Izmalkova A.

The study explores gaze behavior in novel metaphor recognition in L1 and L2 as affected by the syntactic position of a metaphor; therefore, we test the contrastive role of syntactic foregrounding in information processing. Following cognitive linguistic theories of foregrounding [Talmy 2000; Iriskhanova 2014], we expect its effects on both gaze behavior and metaphor recognition in subject and predicate positions. Following the theories exploring the role of cognitive mechanisms of analogical reasoning and associative fluency [Gentner & Bowdler 2008; Holyoak & Stamenković 2020] in L1 and L2 [Littlemore et al. 2011, Heredia and Cieślicka 2016], we expect differences in L1 and L2 participants in reading and recognition of novel metaphors. The results show that novel metaphor recognition in less foregrounded syntactic position is better in both L1 and L2, which might be explained by the fact that in syntactically foregrounded positions the participants were more likely to search for the source of metaphor, rather than for its target. Additionally, we revealed significant differences in L1 and L2 gaze performance in mean fixation duration, which is higher in syntactically foregrounded position for L2, which might be explained by higher effects of syntactic foregrounding in L2.

Keywords: metaphor, information processing, semantic foregrounding