primary metaphor

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

A primary metaphor is a simple conceptual mapping learned through recurrent correlations between bodily and subjective experience, such as affection with warmth. RB2 distinguishes these acquired associations from the more complex metaphors they can help compose. The proposed subentry preserves that developmental account without treating primary metaphors as innate finished propositions, identical to image schemas or universally expressed in exactly the same words.

Explanation

The direct account describes warmth associated with being held, increased quantity with rising levels, and difficulty with burdens. These are examples of correlated experience contributing inferential relations, not proof that every metaphor is learned at one exact age or reducible to one isolated episode. Native references preserve the theoretical provenance.

Primary mappings can combine in more complex structures through conceptual blending. The entry keeps that compositional role distinct from saying every blended concept has one primary origin or that the mapping literally identifies an emotion with temperature or a difficulty with a physical load. The relation concerns structured understanding.

RB3 explicitly separates body-based image schemas from primary metaphors acquired through experience. RB2 also preserves cultural variation built upon shared embodiment. The proposal consequently retains common bodily grounding without flattening distinctions among evolved capacities, learned mappings and culture-specific elaborations, or claiming all communities express the same relation identically.

Scope and attribution

Keep acquisition, correlation and composition distinct without inventing developmental timing.

AB — The Actual Book

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 96.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Simple learned correlations can support complex metaphors while allowing cultural variation.

Occurrence locators: 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Acquired primary metaphors differ from body-based image schemas and evolved capacities.

Occurrence locators: 76, 77, 83, 84.