台大心理系

Previous studies on metaphor and music have yielded fruitful results in recent decades; however, few have investigated the interactive relationship between multimodal metaphor, metonymy, music, and embodiment in children's musical compositions. This study examines how concrete images, sound phrases, and social greetings are conceptualized and represented multimodally in musical and physical modes in "Music Together," a popular early childhood music development program. Through cognitive-pragmatic analysis of musical scores, lyrics, and movement instructions, we demonstrate that children's music employs sophisticated form-function pairings that serve distinct developmental purposes. Our findings reveal that musical features (pitch contours, harmonic structures, rhythmic patterns) function as sonic analogs for dynamic processes, creating embodied experiences that support language acquisition and conceptual development. Repetitive patterns in children's music function metonymically, creating part-whole relationships that facilitate memory reinforcement and pattern recognition. Musical interactions between children and caregivers establish the cooperative infrastructure necessary for communication development through shared intentionality, mutual attention, and emotional coordination. This research demonstrates that children's music represents a sophisticated cognitive tool that creates multimodal conceptualizations through the integration of metonymic imagination, metaphorical reasoning, and interactive embodied experience.