Intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

This paper is concerned with motivation and transparency in the lexicon. After a theoretical discussion of motivation, the author presents an empirical study that focuses on the motivation of formally simple and complex polysemous Italian words. It is shown that the motivatability of polysemous words does not depend on formal complexity alone, but also on the cognitive relation (metaphor vs. metonymy) that connects the meanings of a polysemous word.

• Affiliations: 1: University of Stuttgart