What empirical work can tell us about Primary Metaphors

Javier Valenzuela ∗
University of Murcia

WORD COUNT: 5933

1. Introduction

One of the (many) riddles about language and its relation to thought is how is it possible
that we can talk about things that we do not perceive directly. How are we able to
communicate our thoughts about intangible, abstract notions such as love, friendship,
importance, peace, justice or inflation? One of the possible explanations has been
provided by what has been termed “Conceptual Metaphor Theory” (henceforth, CMT 1 ),
championed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In their 1999 book, they propose that
our ability to entertain abstract thoughts depends crucially on our ability to project
information from concrete domains, from which we do have direct and grounded
experiences (basically, sensorimotor information), onto abstract domains. Such abstract
domains can in this way be re-structured and understood more easily. Most of the
evidence for the existence of this cognitive mechanism comes from linguistic grounds.
Thus, and just to name a couple of examples, metaphors have proved extremely useful
to explain issues such as the extension of meanings (i.e., polysemy) in our lexicon
(Lakoff, 1987). Instead of a haphazard collection of senses, the lexicon can in this way
be regarded as a motivated network in which many of the extensions from one sense to
another are based on a metaphoric (or metonymic) link. Metaphor and metonymy have
also suggested very natural pathways for the diachronic evolution of the meaning of
words (Sweetser, 1990) and even of grammatical constructions.
However, since in a very explicit way, a metaphor in CMT is not conceived as a
linguistic phenomenon, but rather as a cognitive mechanism that helps us structure our
inventory of concepts, there must necessarily be other ways of proving their existence.

∗
This work has been partially supported by the research projects SEJ2006-04732/PSIC and 05817/PHCS/07
(Fundación Séneca)
1
We will use this denomination for the theory for lack of an “official” name; some authors working within the theory
have been using a slightly different version which also includes “metonymy” (i.e., “The Cognitive Theory of
Metaphor and Metonymy” –CTMM; cf. Barcelona, 2002).
Some alternative methods could include for example, psycholinguistic studies or just
any of the other methodologies that the broader field of cognitive science normally uses
to assess its proposed explanatory notions.
There is more or less general agreement on the fact that nonlinguistic evidence is
needed to buttress the notion of metaphor as a fundamental mental capacity by which
we conceptualize abstract experiences. This has in fact been argued by many authors,
many of them working within CMT, as a necessary step to avoid some of the
accusations of “circularity of reasoning”. A common methodology in metaphor theory
has been to group together a given number of linguistic expressions, which are found to
share certain common characteristics, and then use these expressions to propose a given
conceptual metaphor; this conceptual metaphor is in turn used to explain why there is
such as numerous group of these linguistic expressions 2 .
Lakoff & Johnson (1999) presented psycholinguistic evidence supporting their
theory, but the debate whether psycholinguistic studies support or reject CMT is far
from over. Some psychologists have openly contested the theory and seem reluctant to
accept some of its tenets (e.g., Glucksberg, Brown & McGlone, 1993; Glucksberg &
McGlone, 1999; Keysar & Bly, 1999; McGlone, 1996, 2007; Murphy, 1996, 1997),
while, on the other hand, many recent studies provide evidence which seems to be
consistent with CMT (e.g., Boroditsky, 2000, 2001; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002;
Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008; Françozo, Lima & Gibbs, 2004; Meier & Robinson,
2004; Santiago, Lupiáñez, Pérez & Funes, 2007; Schubert, 2005; Silvera, Josephs &
Giesler, 2004; Torralbo, Santiago & Lupiáñez, 2006).
One more or less recent notion in CMT that can be useful for settling these
matters is that of Primary Metaphor. Since its proposal in Grady (1997), the distinction
between Complex and Primary Metaphors has figured prominently in all introductions
to CMT. For example, in Lakoff & Johnson (1999), this distinction superseded other
previous distinctions between different types of metaphors (e.g., ontological vs
imagistic vs structural, etc), that had been present in older versions of the theory (e.g.,
Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Turner 1989).
In what follows (section 2), we will present the main characteristics of Primary
Metaphor Theory, which apart for other benefits, “opens possibilities for falsifying the
theory” (Costa, 2004:110). After that, in Section 3, we will review some empirical work

2
For a review of this and some other “putative” problems with CMT, see Valenzuela & Soriano (2004).
which partly supports and partly refines the theory. One aim of this paper is to show
how empirical work can help not just to support or reject theoretical proposals, but even
to refine hypotheses, to make them more specific and focused and to point at newer
phenomena that must be theoretically integrated.

2. Primary metaphor theory

Primary metaphors were initially presented by Joseph Grady (Grady, 1997) and
later on included in the “official” version of CMT (e.g, Lakoff & Johnson, 1999;
Feldman, 2004). Grady’s initial observation was that some conceptual metaphors could
be decomposable into simpler ones; after examining carefully a metaphor such as
THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS, he came to propose that it was actually formed by two more
basic metaphors, PERSISTING IS STANDING ERECT and ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL

STRUCTURE. This decomposition could in fact be extended to the rest of the

metaphorical system, in such a way that some metaphors emerged as “atoms” or
“primitives”. These “atomic” metaphors could then be combined to form more complex
ones 3 .
Primary metaphors have several characteristics that make them special: they
arise from experiential correlations, so their learning is unconscious and automatic,
they are therefore better candidates for universals and also highly embodied, and the
experiences that both source and target domains make reference to are relatively basic.
Let us see each of these characteristics with a little bit more of detail.
Probably the most salient characteristic of these metaphors concerns their origin:
they arise from experiential correlations in the world. This represents a change in
previous versions of the theory, since now, the origin of metaphor is not some type of
perceived similarity but the notion of co-ocurrence. For example, in many ocassions we
perceive a scene in which there is an increment in quantity of some substance or
material and we are able to perceive that the stuff that is increasing in quantity also
increases in height. This is what happens if we pile books on a table: the more books we
put, the higher the pile goes; the same correlation would be observed when we fill a
bottle with water, or in countless other cases. This perceived correlation between

3
The precise ways in which the “molecular” complex metaphors are formed fall outside the direct scope of Primary
Metaphor theory and are better explained by Fauconnier and Turner’s Theory of Conceptual Blending and
Integration.
QUANTITY and VERTICALITY is what would give rise to the primary metaphor MORE IS

UP, which would then explain more abstract uses of “increase in quantity”, such as the
stock prices all over the world have gone down/plummeted in this crisis or a high level
of cholesterol could lead to heart problems.
The linguist Christopher Johnson (Johnson, 1999) went even further and
suggested that there is a period in the development of the child’s conceptual system in
which s/he does not distinguish between both domains: they are said to be conflated. In
this theory of conflation, we encounter complex situations which are experienced
globally, as experiential gestalts 4 , but in which different facets can potentially be
distinguished. Thus, for a baby being affectionately held, the same situation
encompasses the expression of AFFECTION and the WARMTH of being held; these two
notions are thus “conflated” in his/her experience. It is only later at a more advanced
stage in his/her cognitive development that s/he learns to discriminate more finely and
both notions are seggregated; however, this connection between both domains persists
in some form and is the basis of the mappings that give rise to the primary metaphor
AFFECTION IS WARMTH.

Primary Metaphors are highly embodied, in at least two different senses. On the
one hand, they depend directly on our interaction with the environment and thus our
bodily characteristics: we experience notions such as warmth or height directly with our
bodies, via our perceptual/sensorimotor apparatus. Their embodied nature makes them
compatible with embodied approaches to language and cognition (e.g., Barsalou 1999,
2003; Glenberg, 1997; Gibbs, 2003; Zwaan, 2004). The second sense in which they are
embodied is a derivation from Conflation theory: in those initial experiences, the two
domains that are correlated are activated simultaneously in our brain; they become in
this way linked by neural connections by means of the mechanism known as Hebbian
learning (which could be paraphrased as “neurons that fire together, wire together”).
Thus, in Lakoff & Johnson (1999) we are told that metaphors have a direct, physical
existence in our brains: they are the neural connections that link distinct brain areas
belonging to the correlated domains.
Obviously, we acquire primary metaphors in an automatic and unconscious
fashion, simply by interacting with the world. Since many of the experiential
correlations that provide the basis for primary metaphors are found in common human

4
What Vilarroya (2002) would call a slife, his short-hand term for “slice of life”.
scenes, and since all humans share similar bodily experiences, these metaphors may
well be universal. So to speak, universal primary experiences would tend to produce
universal primary metaphors. This is different from complex metaphors, where the
combination of primary metaphors into some specific configuration holds a higher
chance of being affected by culture-specific factors.
There are additional characteristics of primary metaphors; for example, both
source and target domains correspond to relatively simple domains. Roughly, source
domains are embodied experiences, typically related to perceptual or force-dynamic
schematizations of experience, while target domains are normally subjective fields of
evaluation, for example, something being difficult or not, important or not, good or not,
perceiving an entity as being the controlling or the controlled one in a given situation,
etc.

- Affection Is Warmth - Similarity Is Closeness - Purposes Are Desired Objects

- Important Is Big - Linear Scales Are Paths - Causes Are Physical Forces
- Happy Is Up - Organization Is Physical Structure - Relationships Are Enclosures
- Intimacy Is Closeness - Help Is Support - Control Is Up
- Bad Is Stinky - Time Is Motion - Knowing Is Seeing
- Difficulties Are Burdens - States Are Locations - Understanding Is Grasping
- More Is Up - Change Is Motion - Seeing Is Touching
- Categories Are Containers - Purposes Are Destinations - Desire is Hunger

Table 1. Some Primary Metaphors

Given this state of affairs, it should be clear now why psycholinguistic and
neurolinguistic evidence for these metaphors should be easier to locate than for more
cultural, complex metaphors. In this paper, we review a number of empirical studies that
have been (and are still being) conducted that address the putative existence of these
structures in the human mind. Our specific aim is to show how, in true cognitive science
spirit, looking at these cognitive-linguistic notions from the point of view of research
conducted in neighbouring areas (e.g., social psychology or cognitive psychology), can
help us arrive at a more precise and defined view of these structures. Due to space
limitations, we will make a selection of relevant work5 , trying to show the benefits of an
interaction between empirical work and theoretical models.

3. Some empirical work dealing with primary metaphors

5
A more inclusive review (which also presents a detailed psychological model of metaphor processing) can be found
in Santiago, Román & Ouellet (in prep).
3.1. Time as space
The use of the physical domain of space to structure the more abstract domain of
time is with all probability the better known and more widely investigated of all
metaphors; to use Casasanto’s metaphor, TIME has become our particular “Fruit fly”:

“Time has become for the metaphor theorist what the fruit fly is for the
geneticist: the model system of choice for linguistic and psychological tests of
relationships between metaphorical source and target domains” (Casasanto, in
press).

There is a wealth of studies uncovering the relationships existing between space

and time 6 . In general, most of these studies can be taken as sound empirical support for
the general idea that the domain of TIME is structured by SPACE (e.g., Boroditsky, 2000,
2001; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002; Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008; Nuñez, Motz, &
Teuscher, 2005; Santiago, Lupiáñez, Pérez & Funes, 2007; Torralbo, Santiago &
Lupiáñez, 2006). The more specific proposals made by CMT regarding the spatial
structuring of time, that is, the proposal that there are (at least) two types of spatial
metaphors that structure time, namely, the Ego-moving metaphor (e.g. we are
approaching Christmas) and the Time-moving metaphor (e.g., Christmas holidays are
getting nearer) have also been specifically supported (e.g., Boroditsky, 2000, 2001;
Gentner, Imai & Boroditsky, 2002). Some of these studies have additionally addressed
the relationship between embodied experience and the metaphoric system; for example,
Boroditsky & Ramscar (2002) showed how some our real-world experience of spatial
situations (e.g., standing in a cafeteria line or riding on a train) had an effect on the type
of spatiotemporal metaphors that are activated. In this way, people experiencing motion
(e.g., on a train) were more likely to use an Ego-moving metaphor for time, while those
that underwent the experience of an object moving towards them (e.g., waiting for a
train), were more likely to activate the Time-moving version.
Empirical work in this area has gone beyond the initial proposals of CMT.
Initially, in both the “Ego-moving metaphor” and the “Time-moving metaphor”
versions, time was conceived as a horizontal line in a front-back axis to the speaker, in
such a way that the Future was conceived in front and the past was conceived behind the

6
In fact, the relationships between space and time have been known for a long time; see for example Piaget &
Inhelder (1969)
speaker. Núñez & Sweetser (2006) gesture studies were able to show that, in some
cultures, this organization could be reversed: for the Aymara, the future is at the back
and the past is in front of the person. As it turns out, the time-line can have other axes in
fact; for example, Boroditsky (2001) was able to show that Mandarin speakers could
also conceptualize the time line vertically, so that the past is located “up” and the future
is “down” (so that the “down” month would approximately mean the “next” month).
Additionally, in this study she showed that English speakers could be trained to
organize time also vertically, suggesting more concrete ways in which cognitive
structuring can take place.
Finally, empirical research has also uncovered another way of spatializing time,
which, interestingly enough, has no linguistic reflex (at least no language that uses it has
been reported yet). In these cases, time is conceived as a horizontal line which
progresses, not on a sagittal view (i.e., front-back), but on a transversal one (i.e., left-
right). Priming experiments by Torralbo, Santiago & Lupiáñez (2006) and Santiago,
Lupiáñez, Perez & Funes (2007) and gesture studies by Casasanto and Lozano (2008)
have shown how in Western societies, this horizontal line is followed left-to-right, so
that the past is located to our left, and the future is located to our right. This seems to be
related to the direction of writing-reading, and there is evidence that the opposite
orientation is found in cultures that have the opposite way of writing (e.g., Tversky,
Kugelmass and Winter, 1991). Thus, for Hebrews and Arabs, the past is located on the
right and the future on the left (the same explanation could be applied to Boroditsky’s
results with Mandarin speakers).

3.2. Other spatial metaphors

HAPPY IS UP/GOOD IS UP. Time is not the only domain which has been shown to
be spatially organized. For example, Casasanto & Lozano (2008) used a variant of the
Stroop effect paradigm which involved gesturing to show that vertical organization
underlies the use of abstract domains such as HAPPINESS. In their study, participants had
to use both hands to move marbles from one tray to another one located either above
(red) or below (blue). The direction of the movement was made to depend on the colour
of a word appearing in a screen. So, for example, if the word appearing in the screen
was blue, they had to move a ball to the blue tray below, and if it was red, they had to
move it up to the red tray 7 . Crucially, the meaning of the word (though irrelevant for the
task, which involved only the colour of the letters) was related to “happy” or to “sad”.
Participants were much quicker (and accurate) moving the balls when the resulting
gesture was metaphor-congruent (that is, when a “happy” word corresponded to an “up”
gesture) than in metaphor-incongruent cases. The same results were obtained when the
words were replaced by happy or sad faces (this time, the red or blue colour guiding the
motion was present in the image-background in which the faces appeared). Some of the
stimulus they used also corresponded to other words hypothetically organized by
vertical metaphors (e.g., wealthy, poor, virtuous, evil, hero, villain, etc.).
Meier & Robinson (2004) also tested the relationship between what they termed
“affect” (a term they used to include notions such as “happy/sad” and also “good/bad”)
and “vertical position”. In their experiment, subjects were quicker to respond to
“affective” words (e.g, hero or good) appearing at the top of the screen than in
metaphor-incongruent positions (i.e., at the bottom).
CONTROL/POWER IS UP. Schubert (2005) and Valenzuela & Soriano (in press)
have conducted studies dealing with the CONTROL IS UP metaphor. For example,
Valenzuela & Soriano (in press) presented subjects with vertically arranged pairs of
words. The task of the subjects was to decide whether both items were semantically
related or not. The presentation of the stimuli could be either metaphor-congruent (e.g.,
captain above soldier) or the other way round. Subjects were quicker to respond in
metaphor-congruent positions than in metaphor-incongruent cases.
A specially interesting case is Schubert (2005); in one of his experiments, he
was able to dissociate the dimensions of “power” and “judgment” (normally, “power” is
associated with “good”). For example, besides stimuli in which powerful and positive
are associated (e.g., leader), he also included cases in which there was an association
between powerful and negative (e.g. dictator). Interestingly, people responded to these
words differently when the task required them to judge them either as positive or as
powerful. Thus, dictator was processed quicker if it appeared at the top of the screen
when the task involved judging stimuli as powerful or not, and was processed quicker if
it appeared at the bottom of the screen when the task involved judging stimuli as
positive or not, showing in this way how flexibility of mapping plays a prominent role
in the processing of abstract words, a mechanism that has not been outlined by CMT.

7
Actually, the location of the blue and red trays was counterbalanced across subjects.
 SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS. Casasanto (in press) tested the relationship between
similarity and closeness, which is said to motivate the sense extensions of words such as
close or far that can be used with the meanings “similar” and “different”, respectively
(e.g., that is not the correct answer, but it is close enough, or their opinions on this issue
couldn’t be farther apart). In his initial experiment, Casasanto presented pairs of
abstract words (e.g., grief and justice) and asked his subjects to rate how
similar/different they were. Both words appeared horizontally alligned, side by side, but
in three different positions; close to each other, separated from each other, or far from
each other. His results showed that people would judge the same word-pair as more
similar when they had seen it close to each other, and as more different when it had
been presented in the more distant condition. However, these results were reversed in a
second experiment in which the stimuli involved pictures of unfamiliar faces. This time,
when the pairs of faces were presented far from each other, they were judged as more
similar than when they were presented close to each other. He included a final
experiment in which concrete words were presented and subjects were asked to evaluate
their similarity either in appearance or in function/use. The results showed that subjects
who were asked to judge the similarity of the words using a conceptual judgement
criterion (i.e., function or use) tended to evaluate closer words as more similar and far-
apart word pairs as less similar, while subjects which had to decide on perceptual
similarity performed in the inverse direction (i.e., close as less similar and far as more
similar). Casasanto’s study shows how, though linguistically, no difference is found
between both types of similarity (we would use the same metaphor in the same way in
both cases), there seems to be a difference in the mapping of similarity to distance
depending on which dimension is to be evaluated. This can be taken as a very clear case
in which empirical testing can not only enrich and refine the predictions by CMT but go
beyond them, uncovering mechanisms which cannot be accessed using a purely
linguistic methodology.

3.3. Other concrete-to-abstract metaphors

IMPORTANT IS BIG. There is another group of metaphors which relate the physical
domain of SIZE with different abstract domains. This is what can be seen in the
IMPORTANT IS BIG metaphor investigated by Schubert (in press) and Valenzuela &
Soriano (2008). Valenzuela & Soriano (2008) reported on a series of experiments in
which subjects had to decide which of two factors they judged as more important in
their lifes. These “life factors” were abstract concepts and the answer to the task was a
matter of personal choice (i.e., there was no “correct” answer). Thus, they would see
“friendship” and “money” side by side, and they would have to choose one of these
factors as more important for their lives. Size was manipulated by varying the font in
which the words were presented; one of them was bigger (20 pt. font) and the other one
smaller (12 pt. font). Their results showed that people were faster in their choice of the
more important factor when the size was metaphor-coherent (i.e., big in size) than in the
inverse case. Additionally, in another block, subjects were asked to choose the less
important factor for them. This time, if the IMPORTANT IS BIG metaphor was present,
they should be quicker when choosing the smaller stimulus: roughly, an attempt to
categorize a stimulus appearing in big font as “less important” should produce a
inconsistency due to the automatic activation of “more important” associated to big
stimuli, and accordingly subjects should take a longer time. Indeed such was the result,
which can be taken a an indication that the metaphor IMPORTANT IS BIG is automatically
activated in on-line tasks. In another experiment, Valenzuela and Soriano (2008) used
the experimental paradigm known as Implicit Association Test (IAT) in which subjects
have to create a novel-compound category made up of compatible or incompatible
notions. In the case of the IMPORTANT IS BIG metaphor, subjects were much quicker and
accurate when they had to group together “important” words along with “big” words
(and “small” and “unimportant” words) than in the non-congruent cases (i.e.,
associating “important” and “small” words and “unimportant” and “big” words).
Similar results, though still preliminary, have been reported by these authors applying
this experimental paradigm to the AFFECTION IS WARMTH metaphor.
Schubert et alli (in press) has also investigated the relation between size and
power (POWERFUL IS BIG), again showing the existence of flexibility in metaphorical
mappings. In his experiments, subjects had to assign a social group to the category
“powerful” or “powerless”. The words corresponding to the categories were presented
either in big or small font. Their results showed that people’s responses were both
quicker and more accurate when the stimulus font size matched the metaphor than in the
inverse cases. However, when subjects were explained the possible effect of size and
encouraged to try to avoid its influence, their error rate decreased; in a further
experiment, not only were subjects informed of these possible effects, but they were
also presented a high number of incongruent mappings (e.g., powerful group with small
font), thus increasing their practice with these cases. In this last study, subjects reaction
times also improved, showing again that the default application of metaphoric mappings
can be subject to conscious control by part of conceptualizers, given a task that so
requires it.

4. Conclusions
The goal of CMT is one of the most relevant for cognitive science: it is
concerned with how we structure thought. As such, any advancement in the theory is
vitally relevant for anyone interested in the study of cognition. Primary Metaphor
Theory has contributed to place CMT nearer to other current approaches to the study of
embodied cognition, such as Embodiment theory (e.g., Glenberg, 1997), Simulation
Theories (e.g., Zwaan, 2004) or Perceptual Symbol Theory (e.g., Barsalou 1999), to the
extent that some of the results of these compatible theories could be taken as providing
partial support for some of the views of CMT. At the very least, the basic idea that there
are complex and abstract domains which are structured by the projection of information
from more concrete domains (e.g., good and up/white/big 8 ) does seem to receive
support from many different studies from different areas.
This is not to say that the CMT or even Primary Metaphor Theory are without
problems. For example, the origin and development course of primary metaphors (i.e.,
the Conflation hypothesis) has been insufficiently spelled out 9 ; the interplay between
universality and culture-specificity (e.g., Kovecses, 2007) is in clear need of further
clarification; even the psycholinguistic status of metaphors is not completely clear yet.
Lakoff’s view of metaphors as stable, neurophysiologically implemented structures in
the mind/brain has not received clear support from neuroscience, and proponents of
cognition as a dynamical system 10 would suggest alternative explanations for many of
the phenomena observed. Finally, how do we choose between different versions of a
metaphor (that is, the issue of flexibility) is again a point that will have to be clarified in
the future.
At the very least, the interplay between linguistically-based theoretical proposals
on the one hand, and empirical work coming from other cognitive sciences, such as
cognitive psychology, social psychology or neuroscience, on the other, seems to be

8
For more information on these specific metaphors, see Meier & Robinson (2004), Meier, Robinson, Clore (2004)
and Meier, Robinson & Caven (in press), respectively.
9
For a view explicitly challenging the Conflation hypothesis, see Seitz (2005).
10
For a review of these approaches, see Calvo-Garzón, Laakso & Gomila (2008); from the more “cognitive-
linguistic” camp, Gibbs seems to be seduced by this dynamic-emergent approach (e.g., Gibbs & Cameron, 2008;
Gibbs, 2008).
working in this case. Thus, we have seen how empirical studies can suggest refinements
in the theory (as was the case of the different time-lines existing in the TIME IS SPACE

metaphor), point at non-linguistic realizations of metaphor (cf. left-right metaphors for

time), or suggest restrictions or additions to proposed metaphors (cf Casasanto’s work
on similarity as closeness). And if we take a look as the way in which other scientific
disciplines work, it seems that, to use another spatial metaphor, this is the way to go.

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Autor: Javier Valenzuela Manzanares
Título: What empirical work can tell us about primary metaphors

Abstract
The distinction between Complex and Primary Metaphors (Grady, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson
1999) has figured prominently in the later stages of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). In this paper,
we review a number of psycholinguistic empirical studies that address the existence of these structures in
the human mind. We will show how many of these studies can be specially helpful for CMT, since they
propose refinements in the theory, point at non-linguistic realizations of metaphor, and suggest constraints
on proposed metaphors. In conclusion, the interplay between theoretical proposals and empirical work
which is common in other scientific enterprises seems to be working in this case also.

KEYWORDS: conceptual metaphor theory, primary metaphor, empirical studies on metaphor.

Resumen
La distinción entre Metáforas Complejas y Primarias (Grady, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson 1999) ha adquirido
una gran relevancia en los últimos estadios de la Teoría Conceptual de la Metáfora (TCM). En este
trabajo, se revisan una serie de estudios empíricos de corte psicolingüístico que estudian la existencia de
estas estructuras en nuestra mente. Mostraremos cómo muchos de estos estudios pueden ser
particularmente beneficiosos para la TCM, ya que proponen refinamientos en la teoría, son capaces de
señalar realizaciones no-lingüísticas de una metáfora y pueden sugerir restricciones en el funcionamiento
de algunas metáforas propuestas. En conclusión, el intercambio entre propuestas teóricas y trabajo
empírico que es común en otras disciplinas científicas, parece estar funcionando también en este caso.

PALABRAS CLAVE: teoría de la metáfora conceptual, metáfora primaria, estudios empíricos sobre
metáfora.

Dirección del autor:

Javier Valenzuela
Depto. Filología Inglesa
Universidad de Murcia
Plaza de la Universidad, 1
30001 MURCIA

Tlf: 968 36 43 68
Correo-e: [email protected]