Pattern-Prototype Effects of Processing Familiar Metonymy in Sentential Context

This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment on processing different patterns of Chinese familiar metonymy in sentential contexts.It analyzes five eye-tracking measures concerning the processing of metonymy.The results indicate that different patterns of metonymy experience different processing processes under a sentential-context condition,and results in prototype effects.The main finding is that Spatial Part&Whole metonymy is more prototypical than other three patterns of metonymy,i.e.,Container and Contained,Location and Located,Entity and Adjacent Entity,and that the effect of metonymy pattern on the processing is stable and observable.It concludes that contextual information facilitates the processing of non-prototypical metonymy,but restrain the processing of prototypical metonymy.