Ingrid Lossius Falkum uses data from young children’s communicative development to argue that metaphor and metonymy rely on different pragmatic mechanisms. Metaphor and metonymy do have certain characteristics in common: they both target individual words or phrases, they both contribute content to the proposition explicitly expressed, and they both lie on a continuum of literal and figurative uses. However, developmental data suggests that early metonymic uses may be the result of a more basic process than metaphorical uses, one in which the child exploits salient associative relations to compensate for gaps in vocabulary.

Tomoko Matsui takes a developmental perspective on ironical language use and considers the role of epistemic vigilance and mind-reading mechanisms in children’s understanding of irony. She discusses evidence that indicates that children as old as 9 years may misinterpret instances of irony as deliberate lies and suggests that this is a result of their developing epistemic vigilance mechanisms (specifically, a sensitivity to the truth or falsity of information) together with a not yet fully mature appreciation of how information can achieve relevance.