Conceptual Blending and Metaphorical Extension in the child's mind: watering and drinking as examples A cognitive – linguistic approach

Abstract

This study explores the essential theoretical and epistemological basis of the conceptual blending hypothesis and demonstrate its relationship with the metaphorical extension of semantic categories. It also aims to trace the procedural stretches of this hypothesis on an empirical level based on a field study that tracked the metaphorical behaviour of a sample of children (4 – 7 years) from preschool and elementary level in the Moroccan context. All this with the objective to measure the relationship between conceptual blending and metaphorical extension of the child taking both watering and drinking as examples, in order both to approach the processes of the production of metaphors and their representation in the mind of this group of participants, and to describe the cognitive mechanisms behind these mental operations that shows the way the metaphor is treated in various dimensions: psychological, conceptual, and perceptual. The study concluded that conceptual blending was the basis of metaphorical extension for the child, with relative differences between the participants because of the variable of age: the lower the age of the participant is the wider the integration. the results showed in association with the path of linking the two experiences that the metaphorical linking emanates from the most embodied experience as reflected in literature of embodied cognitive paradigm and consistent with the hypothesis of the Embodied Mind.