隱喻多義詞之心理處理歷程：語境、詞義頻率與詞義顯著性

Abstract

隱喻的心理處理歷程早有學者研究，因其對了解人類認知饒具意義。然而，隱喻和詞彙擷取過程之間的關聯卻少有人探討。此議題十分重要，因為理解約定俗成隱喻的基礎在於激發已然詞彙化的隱喻詞義，但早期的詞彙擷取模型卻鮮少區別出隱喻義和字面義這兩種性質不同的意義，並探討其處理歷程。本文嘗試整合隱喻和詞彙擷取研究，從Giora (2003) 提出的層次顯著性假說出發，探討詞彙隱喻，也就是隱喻多義詞（例如：「壓力」）的心理處理歷程。根據層次顯著性假說，在認知上較為顯著的詞義，意即「較高頻、為人熟悉、或約定俗成程度高」的意義在語境中總是會在先期被激發。Giora (2003) 的模型不同於前人的模型，因其能廣泛的解釋詞彙擷取以及比喻語言的處理歷程，也因此在文獻中受到相當的重視 (Gibbs, 2001)。但其兩大主要問題在於：第一，對意義顯著性的定義模糊，尤其未清楚陳明意義顯著性和意義頻率之間的關係；第二，在語意分析和詞義區分上缺乏清楚的操作型定義。

針對這些議題，本研究採取了語料庫語言學方法及認知語意學理論，並將其與心理語言學實驗結合。我們根據中文詞彙網路區別「詞義」和「義面」兩種不同層次的意義，並計算這些詞義在語料庫中的頻率。在一系列詞彙聯想作業和跨模組詞彙激發作業中，我們發現：顯著性高而屬於「詞義」層次的字面意義無法充分在偏向隱喻義的語境中被激發。此結果和層次顯著性假說的預測相反，卻與Ahrens等 (1998) 和Croft與Cruse (2004) 的詞彙語意理論相符，他們主張「詞義」層次的詞彙語意不能共存於同一語境之中。此研究的結果因此對層次顯著性假說並隱喻和詞彙擷取研究具有重要意義；我們特別認為，基於認知語言學的精細詞彙語意分析對此類研究十分必要。除此之外，本研究並闡明了詞義頻率與詞義顯著性的關係，亦即語料庫反映人類認知的程度，也顯示認知語意學理論能裨益心理語言學研究中對意義的詮釋。因此，此論文的成果對於認知科學研究將具有跨領域的貢獻。

Processing of metaphor has long been studied due to implications on human cognition. But less has been explored as to its relationship with lexical access. This is important, because comprehension of conventional metaphors fundamentally hinges on activation of lexicalized metaphorical meanings, but early lexical access models rarely consider a distinction between literal and metaphorical meanings. This study attempts to bring these two lines of research together by investigating processing of lexical metaphors, i.e., metaphorical polysemy (e.g., “pressure”) based on Giora’s (2003) graded salience hypothesis. The graded salience hypothesis states that salient meanings, i.e., “more frequent, more familiar, or more conventional” meanings, are always initially accessed in context. Giora’s model differs from previous models because it comprehensively interprets lexical access as well as figurative language processing, thus receiving much attention in literature (Gibbs, 2001). But it has two major problems: (1) Vague definition of salience, particularly its relationship with frequency, and (2) Unclear criteria for semantic analysis and meaning distinction. To address these issues, this thesis combined a corpus linguistic approach and recent cognitive semantic theories with psycholinguistic experiments. I distinguished sense-level meanings from facet-level meanings based on Chinese Wordnet and calculate their sense frequencies in corpus. In one offline word association task and two online cross-modal lexical priming tasks, I found: Salient, sense-level literal meanings cannot be sufficiently activated in metaphorically-biased contexts. This contradicted the graded salience hypothesis’s prediction but corresponded to Ahrens et al.’s (1998) and Croft and Cruse’s (2004) lexical semantic theories that sense-level meanings cannot coexist in the same context. The study thus has significant implications on the graded salience hypothesis and for metaphor and lexical access research in general; particularly, a refined lexical semantic analysis based on cognitive linguistic theories is necessary. Besides, the results shed light on the relationship between frequency and salience, i.e., how corpus reflects human cognition, as well as how cognitive semantic theories can refine interpretations in psycholinguistic studies. Therefore, the study is expected to have a cross-domain contribution to the general field of cognitive science.