本論文旨在探討台灣地區第二外語學習者對於英文中「身體借喻詞」之理解能力。本研究以「連鎖借喻」（chained metonymy, Hilpert, 2007）及「身體部位為世界共通經驗易於理解」（body parts combined with worldly bodily experience promotes comprehension, Kvecses, 2001; de Vega et al., 2004; & Hilpert, 2007）為理論基礎，以問卷方式對台南地區十一所私立高中之34名高一至高三的學生進行測試。以動詞、名詞與形容詞此三種詞類的身體借喻詞為測驗內容，各詞類皆為十題，隨機分佈於問卷中，再採用單因子變異數分析法（one way ANOVA）加以分析研究。
本文研究目的有二：（一）身體借喻詞的互補詞組（complementary pair）是否為影響學習者理解之因素。（二）將資料依Hilpert (2007)提出的認知映照模式予以分類後，受試者對英文身體借喻詞理解能力又為如何。此外，本研究也探討受試者對於身體借喻詞之理解和其年齡、性別與借喻詞於語料庫中出現頻率之關係。
研究結果顯示：（一）依個別詞類或整個問卷的結果看來，高中生能正確的推理六成以上之身體借喻詞。（二）不同於「形容詞劣勢」（adjective deficit, Polinsky, 2005）與詞類學習順序，即動詞先於名詞及形容詞（Polinsky, 2005與Tardif, 2006）之相關研究; 本文發現受試者對於形容詞的理解明顯優於名詞及動詞。。（三）受試者的母語對受試者理解身體借喻詞有正面的助益。例如，本研究中所使用之二十一個身體借諭詞在傳統漢字書寫系統中，便有十八個可直接從文字或是部首得知意思。（四）借喻與許多片語有直接相關，且最常用之片語即以身體部位為本體（Kvecses, 2001）。因此Kvecses（2001）建議與此類身體借喻詞之相關片語應及早學習。此外Littlemore及Low（2006）也提出若第二外語學習者能多訓練自己的譬喻思考，他們即可調整此思考方式作為他們理解與學習的認知方法。

This thesis investigates the ability of Taiwanese second language (L2) learners to negotiate the meaning of human body life form metonymies. Metonymies are important for ESL learners as they provide conceptual motivation for figurative language expressions, many of these with source lexemes derived from the human body or bodily experiences (Kvecses, 2001). The analysis for the current study draws on the theory of chained metonymy proposed by Hilpert (2007) and the idea that body parts combined with worldly bodily experience promotes comprehension (Kvecses, 2001; De Vega et al., 2004; Hilpert, 2007).
The analysis investigates metonymic comprehension based on two research questions and is divided according to 3 lexical categories: metonymic nouns, verbs, and adjectives illustrated by these respective examples: (i) It took a lot of muscle to climb the mountain, (ii) Jill had no money for the bus so she had to leg it home, and (iii) Amy is quite ¬¬handy with tools. The research questions are: (1) Do complementary pair (based on sensorimotor system, location, and classification) human body life form metonymies have a role in performance among the 3 lexical categories? (2) What are the metonymic comprehension rates after dividing the data according to Hilpert’s (2007) four types of conceptual mappings for meaning extension? The analysis also investigates metonymic comprehension according to grade and gender, and corpus appearance frequency.
Thirty-four Taiwanese high school students from 11 different high schools in greater Tainan, Taiwan took a multiple choice test of 30 questions, 10 questions for each of the three metonymic lexical categories, randomly ordered, to determine their metonymic competence. The lexical scores were calculated according to percent correct. The overall lexical scores and the research question scores were further examined for analysis of variance with a one-way ANOVA test.
The findings of the present study are as follows: (1) A representative sample of high school-aged Taiwanese ESL learners can negotiate body part metonymies at acceptable rates. (2) Concerning the overall metonymic performance and performance based on our two research questions, we saw acceptable rates no matter how we analyzed the data. (3) During our analysis there was a steady trend of adjectives outperforming nouns and verbs which runs contrary to the “adjective deficit” (Polinsky, 2005) and accepted models of lexical category acquisition (Polinsky, 2005; Tardif, 2006). (4) Comprehension of body part metonymies by the subjects may have been enhanced by their L1, Mandarin Chinese where in its written form, traditional Chinese characters, 18 of the 21 source lexemes used have direct meaning in the form of a self-referential pictograph as part of the semantic construction of the character. (5) Metonymies are directly related to many idioms, and that the most common idioms draw on human body parts as their source lexeme (Kvecses, 2001). Because of this important relationship and high frequency, Kvecses recommends that these body part idioms be taught early on in ESL classrooms. Furthermore if L2 learners train themselves to think more metaphorically, this process could be adapted and applied as a cognitive tool for understanding and learning (Littlemore & Low, 2006).

Andreou, G., Eleni, A., & Filippos, V. (2006). Individual
differences in second language learning among university
students. In Hogan, S. N. (Ed.) Trends in Learning
Research. New York: Nova.
Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in
language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Barcelona, A. (2005). The multilevel operation of metonymy
in grammar and discourse. In F. J. R. de Mendoza Ibez &
M. S. P. Cervel (Eds.) Cognitive Linguistics Research.
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Butler, C., Gmez-Gonzlez, M. A., & Doval Surez, S. M.
(2005). The Dynamics of LanguageUse: Functional and
Contrastive Perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Cameron, L., & Low, G. (1999). Researching and applying
metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chen, May Jane, Weekes, B. S., Peng, Dan Ling, & Qin Lei.
(2006). Effects of semantic radial consistency and
combinability on Chinese character processing. In Li,
Ping (Ed.) The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics.
Vol. I: Chinese (pp. 175, 185). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the
Behavioral Sciences (pp. 55) Mawah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum
Associates.
Cortazzi, M., & Jin, Li Xian. (1999). Bridges to learning.
Metaphors of teaching, learning, and language. In L.
Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying
metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deignan, A. (2005). Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics (pp.
63) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
DeVega, M., Robertson, D. A., Glenberg, A. M., Kaschak, M.
P., Rinck, M. (2004). On doing two things at once:
temporal constraints on actions in language
comprehension. Memory and Cognition, 32(7).
DeVellis, R. F. (2003). Scale Development: Theory and
Applications. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Esbensen, K. H., Guyton, D., Westar, F., & Humbler, L. P.
(2002) Multivariate Data Analysis: In Practice: An
introduction to multivariate data analysis and
experimental design. United Kingdom: Came Process AS.
Ghadessy, M., Henry, A., & Roseberry, R. L. (2001). Small
Corpus Studies and ELT: Theory and Practice.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the brain- Metaphor and Hidden
Ideology (pp. 113). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Gonzalez-Marquez, M. (2007). Methods in Cognitive
Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Handy. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved March 16,
2009, from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/handy.
Hilpert, M. (2007). Chained metonymies in lexicon and
grammar: a cross-linguistic perspective on body part
terms. In Radden, G, Kpcke, K. M., Berg, T., & Siemund,
P. (Eds.), Aspects of Meaning Construction (pp. 78-94).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Koch, P. (2004). Metonymy between pragmatics, reference,
and diachrony. Metaphorik.de, 07, 29-31. Retrieved
November 16, 2007 from
http://www.metaphorik.de/07/koch.pdf.
Kvecses, Z. (2001). A cognitive linguistic view of
learning idioms in an FLT context. In M. Ptz, Neimeier,
S., & Dirven, R. (Eds.), Applied Cognitive Linguistics
II: Language Pedagogy (pp. 88-89). Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Leg. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved March 16,
2009, from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/leg.
Littlemore, J., & Low, G. (2006). Metaphoric competence,
second language learning, and communicative language
ability. Applied Linguistics, 27(2).
McNabb, D. E. (2004). Research Methods for Political
Science: Quantitative and Qualitative methods. Armonk,
NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan). (2007).
Educational Situation: Brief Introduction to School.
Education. Retrieved September 19, 2008 from http://english.moe.gov.tw/public/Attachment/88181030471.xls
Murata, Masaki, Qing, Ma, Atasumu, Yamamoto, & Hitoshi,
Ishahara. (2000). Metonymy interpretation using X no Y
examples. Paper presented at the Fourth Symposium of
Natural Language Processing, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Muscle. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved March 16,
2009, from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muscle.
Radden, G. (2005). The Ubiquity of Metonymy. In Campo, J.
L. O., Otal, J. L., Fernando I. V. I., & Fortuo, B. B.
(Eds.), Cognitive and Discourse Approaches to
Metaphor and Metonymy. Castello de la Plana: Universitat
Jaume I.
Radden, G., & Kvecses, Z. (1999). Towards a theory of
metonymy. In Panther, K. U. & Radden, G. (Eds.), Metonymy
in Language and Thought. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Ramsey, R. S. (1989). The Languages of China (pp. 72)
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pauwels, P. (2001). Putting metonymy in its place. In
Panther, K. U. & Radden, G (Eds.), Metonymy in Language
and Thought. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Poibeau, T. (2006). Dealing with metonymic readings of
named entities. Paper presented at the 28th Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver,
Canada.
Polinsky, M. (2005). Word Class distinctions in an
incomplete grammar. In Ravid, D. D. & Shyldkrot, H. B. Z.
(Eds.) Perspectives on Language Development (pp.427).
Boston, MA: Kluwer.
Stahl, S. A. & Nagy, W. E. (2006). Teaching Word Meanings.
New York: Routledge.
Sweetser, E. E. (1990). From Etymology to Pragmatics:
Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tardif, T. (2006). The importance of verbs in Chinese. In
Li, Ping (Ed.) The Handbook of East Asian
Psycholinguistics. Vol. I: Chinese (pp. 132). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Tye, M. (2005). Consciousness and Persons: Unity and
Identity (pp. 43-68). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Ungerer, F., & Schmid, H. J. (2006). An introduction to
cognitive linguistics (2nd ed.) (pp.115-130). London:
Pearson Education.
Warren, B. (2003) An alternative account of the
interpretation of referential metonymy and metaphor. In
Dirven, R. & Prings, R. (Eds.) Metaphor and Metonymy in
Comparison and Contrast. Berlin/New York: Walter de
Gruyter.
Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions Across Languages and
Cultures (pp. 305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zhang, Jijia, Fang, Yenhong, & Chen, Xinkui. (2006). The
role of semantic radicals of Chinese characters in
grammatical categorization of Chinese Visual words. Acta
Psychologica Sinica, (38) 2.