The Ontogenesis of Metaphor: Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers Seen as Cognitive Discovery Procedures

Isbell, Billie Jean; Roncalla, Fredy Amilcar

The Ontogenesis of Metaphor: Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers Seen as Cognitive Discovery Procedures

Abstract

Metaphor, it is argued, plays an important function in cognitive and semantic development of Quechua-speaking children who engage in riddle games. It appears that riddling among the Quechua functions as a discovery procedure as children expand their cognitive operative structures and semantic domains.

Description

The research for this paper was conducted in the Department of Ayacucho during 1975 and 1976 under the sponsorship of The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02 and a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Billie Jean Isbell is responsible for the theoretical formulations in the paper, which she wrote in English. Fredy Amilcar Roncalla Fernandez, the coauthor, collected nearly all of the data. He is a native speaker of Quechua and without his native intuitions and careful translations, this paper would not have been written.

Sponsorship

The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02; Social Science Research Council

Date Issued

1977

Publisher

UCLA Latin American Center.

Keywords

Quecha Language; Peru; Metaphor; Riddles; Ayacucho; Andean Culture

Previously Published As

Isbell, Billie Jean, and Fredy Amilcar Roncalla Fernandez. The Ontogenesis of Metaphor: Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers Seen as Cognitive Discovery Procedures. Journal of Latin American Lore 3:1 (1977): 19-49.

ISSN

0360-1927

Types

article