Reading Brecht and talking to the espresso: Electrophysiological investigations of conventional and novel metonymy

We present a series of three experiments on the comprehension of metonymy that sought to tease apart the role of contextual information and conventionality during the processing of expressions that require a transfer of meaning for proper interpretation. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read or listened to sentences including metonymic expressions and literal controls. The ERP data indicate that contextual support facilitates early processing stages (reflected by contextinduced N400 modulations) but cannot block subsequent processes of pragmatic enrichment (reflected by a Late Positivity for the metonymies relative to literally interpreted expressions). This implies that enriched composition occurs independently from contextual licensing. In addition, conventionality did not have a bearing on the ERP signals, indicating that conventional and novel metonymies are subjected to pragmatic enrichment.