Comprehension of metaphorical expressions differs with their degree of novelty. Conventional metaphors are typically comprehended as easily as literal sentences, while novel metaphors are responded to less quickly than their conventional counterparts. However, the influence of metaphor signals on the interpretability and acceptability of sentences with metaphors, especially their potential interaction with novelty, remains an open question. We conducted six online experiments among 1,694 native speakers of American English to examine how interpretability and acceptability ratings of individually presented sentences were affected by metaphor novelty and different types of metaphor signals. Across all six experiments, we consistently found that novel metaphors decreased the interpretability and acceptability of sentences compared to both conventional metaphors and literal controls. Signals, on the contrary, did not impact the interpretability or acceptability of the sentences. Moreover, only in experiment 3b did we find an interaction between metaphor type and signals. Specifically, when a metaphor was marked by double signals (i.e., both lexical signals and a typographical signal were added around the metaphorical keywords) vs. no signals, acceptability of novel metaphors increased, but acceptability of conventional metaphors decreased. We hypothesize that the double signaling of novel metaphors marks their novelty, making them more acceptable. By contrast, the double signaling of conventional metaphors may have been perceived as redundant, leading to a lower acceptability.

对隐喻表达的理解因其新颖程度而异。传统的隐喻通常像字面句子一样容易理解，而新颖的隐喻的反应速度却比传统隐喻慢。然而，隐喻信号对隐喻句子的可解释性和可接受性的影响，特别是它们与新颖性的潜在相互作用，仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。我们在 1,694 名以美式英语为母语的人中进行了六次在线实验，以研究隐喻新颖性和不同类型的隐喻信号如何影响单独呈现的句子的可解释性和可接受性评级。在所有六个实验中，我们一致发现，与传统隐喻和文字对照相比，新颖的隐喻降低了句子的可解释性和可接受性。相反，信号不会影响句子的可解释性或可接受性。此外，只有在实验 3b 中我们才发现隐喻类型和信号之间的相互作用。具体来说，当隐喻被双信号标记时（即，在隐喻关键字周围添加词汇信号和印刷信号）与无信号相比，新颖隐喻的可接受性增加，但传统隐喻的可接受性下降。我们假设新颖隐喻的双重信号标志着它们的新颖性，使它们更容易被接受。相比之下，传统隐喻的双重信号可能被认为是多余的，导致可接受性较低。