Imagine you have a beautiful garden with various types of flowers. While most people study the colorful petals and intricate shapes of the blossoms, this research delves into the fascinating world of the plant’s roots. By examining verb metaphoric extension, the process by which a verb takes on a new meaning, scientists gain insight into how language evolves and changes over time. The experiments conducted involved analyzing paraphrases of sentences to determine how the meaning of both nouns and verbs were affected under different degrees of semantic strain. The results revealed that verb meanings were more likely to be adjusted than nouns under semantic strain, with the degree of verb meaning adjustment increasing as the strain intensified. Additionally, the study found that verb metaphors primarily arise from online adjustment during sentence processing, while sense selection also contributes. Intriguingly, verbs were more prone to undergo metaphorical changes in meaning, whereas nouns predominantly experienced taxonomic or metonymic shifts. These findings shed light on the origins and processing of verb metaphors, bridging the gap between real-time language comprehension and language evolution.

Abstract
This paper explores the processes underlying verb metaphoric extension. Work on metaphor processing has largely focused on noun metaphor, despite evidence that verb metaphor is more common. Across three experiments, we collected paraphrases of simple intransitive sentences varying in semantic strain—for example, The motor complained → The engine made strange noises—and assessed the degree of meaning change for the noun and the verb. We developed a novel methodology for this assessment using word2vec. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that (a) under semantic strain, verb meanings were more likely to be adjusted than noun meanings; (b) the degree of verb meaning adjustment—but not noun meaning adjustment—increased with semantic strain; and (c) verb meaning extension is primarily driven by online adjustment, although sense selection also plays a role. In Experiment 3, we replicated the word2vec results with an assessment using human subjects. The results further showed that nouns and verbs change meaning in qualitatively different ways, with verbs more likely to change meaning metaphorically and nouns more likely to change meaning taxonomically or metonymically. These findings bear on the origin and processing of verb metaphors and provide a link between online sentence processing and diachronic change over language evolution.

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