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oai:figshare.com:article/34048976 2026-10-01T17:40:45Z category_1 category_19 category_39 category_61 category_64 portal_87 item_type_6 month_year_10_2026

Truncated or Expanded? Conventionality Predicts Syntactic Form in Metaphor Production Faria Sana (12430618) Juana Park (17840969) Christina L. Gagne (25157858) Thomas L. Spalding (4838661) Biophysics Pharmacology Ecology Developmental Biology Cancer findings provide insight use one format people truncate multi ice skater </ metaphors also vary steel arms </ gasoline temper </ steel </ people truncate gasoline </ ice becomes diamonds </ conventional metaphors syntactic format word expressions research suggests participants answered p >< novel (< metaphor varying metaphor production latter (< current experiment conventional (< <p><i>Joe has gasoline temper</i> or <i>Joe’s temper is gasoline</i>—people often use metaphors that vary in syntactic format. But when do they use one format over another? Research suggests that people truncate multi-word expressions over time as they become more established (e.g. someone who skates on ice becomes an <i>ice skater</i>). Given that metaphors also vary in conventionality from being novel (<i>ideas are diamonds</i>) to more established or conventional (<i>arms are steel</i>), do people truncate the latter (<i>steel arms</i>)? In the current experiment, participants read 55 short stories, each of which included a metaphor varying in conventionality and presented in either a truncated or an expanded format. After each story, participants answered a question that elicited them to produce the metaphor included in that story. In their responses to this question, we found that participants truncated more conventional metaphors when they were initially presented in an expanded format and expanded less conventional metaphors when they were initially presented in a truncated format. Together, these findings provide insight into the roles of syntactic format and conventionality on metaphor production.</p> 2026-10-01T17:40:45Z Text Journal contribution 10.6084/m9.figshare.34048976.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Truncated_or_Expanded_Conventionality_Predicts_Syntactic_Form_in_Metaphor_Production/34048976 CC BY 4.0