The Cognitive Accessibility of Synaesthetic Metaphors

In R. Sun and N. Miyake (eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty eighth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 2365–70.A (strongly) synaesthetic metaphor (e.g. , loud yellow) is a metaphor that results from a combination of a modifier and a head, where both express perceptual qualities.Not all synaesthetic metaphors are cognitively equally accessible. In this paper the factors that enhance or reduce the cognitive accessibility of those metaphors are explored for the German language. The order of the sense modalities from which the modifiers and headswere taken turned out to be a significant factor for the accessibility of a metaphor, although earlier claims of a linear order of modalities could be disconfirmed. The frequency of the overall use of a modifier in the language and its morphological status as derived or not derived also turned out to be a significant factor, whereas the frequency of the head had no significant influence.