汉语动作动词隐喻理解的具身效应

sp; experimental  materials  and  employed  motor  priming  to  investigate  the embodied  effect  of  the  metaphoric  sense  of  action  verbs.  On  the  ground  of  the  above experimental results and discussion, the following major findings can be concluded. 

Firstly,  sensorimotor  systems  involve  in  the  comprehension  of  action-verb  metaphors. The  facilitation  observed  in  the  matching  prime  condition  supported  that  the  metaphoric sense of action verbs is partially embodied rather than totally symbolic or amodal. Although the metaphoric sense of action verbs did not refer to actions that can be performed physically, the  activated  specific  body-effector  motor  system  can  promote  subsequent  action-verb metaphor  comprehension  where  the  action  verb  is  executed  by  the  same  body  effector, suggesting that the metaphoric sense of action verbs is embodied to some extent. The present study  investigated  the  embodied  effect  of  Chinese  action-verb  metaphor  comprehension  in native  speakers,  providing  more  evidence  in  the  embodied  studies  in  language comprehension. 

Secondly,  the  embodied  effect  observed  in  the  present  study  is  different  from  previous studies  in  alphabetic  languages  to  some  extent.  More  concretely,  the  difference  between mismatching  prime  and  no-prime  condition  was  found,  which  is  different  from  previous studies.  The  study  selected  Chinese  specific  body-effector-related  action-verb  metaphors  as the experimental materials. Verbs are all body-effector–related, therefore, mismatching prime and target verbs in action-verb metaphor comprehension executed by a different body effector in  the  mismatching  condition  can  capture  a  clearer  picture  about  the  embodied  effect  in action-verb metaphor comprehension. 

Finally,  the  action  content  of  the  metaphoric  sense  of  action  verbs  may  be  relevant  to body effector. The mismatching advantage in the mismatching condition was not observed in previous  studies  in  alphabetic  languages.  In  Schaller  et  al.  [21]  study,  they  used  verbs  with same  effectors  in  the  mismatching  condition  and  found  the  facilitation  in  the  mismatching condition as well. In the first experiment conducted by Wilson and Gibbs, they didn’t depict verbs in the mismatching condition using same effector or not and they only described those verbs as mismatching primes [83]. 

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