Budding metaphors: Input-output effects in metaphor production.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Metaphorical expressions are crucial for language acquisition and cognitive development.
• Understanding the developmental trajectory of metaphor production in children is essential.
• Existing theories offer frameworks but may not fully explain observed acquisition patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a longitudinal analysis of input-output effects in children's metaphor production.
• To investigate the acquisition of both conceptual and resemblance metaphors in early childhood.
• To propose a novel Usage-Based account for metaphor acquisition.

Main Methods:

• Group case-study design with longitudinal sampling of naturalistic conversations.
• Analysis of corpora from six English- and five Polish-speaking children (aged 2-5) and their caregivers.
• Application of a usage-based approach to metaphor identification in child speech (UBAMICS), adapted for Polish.

Main Results:

• 146,103 metaphorical expressions identified in English corpora; 22,909 in Polish corpora.
• Demonstrated clear input-output effects in the acquisition of conventional metaphoric expressions.
• Evidence supports the acquisition of primary conceptual metaphors and resemblance metaphors.

Conclusions:

• Findings support the significant role of input-output effects in metaphor acquisition.
• Existing theories (Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Pragmatic Theory) partially explain the data.
• A novel Usage-Based account is proposed to better account for observed metaphor acquisition patterns.