Dr Alexandra Anna Spalek – Dr Louise McNally | When Verbs Stretch: How Grammar Shapes Figurative Language

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Dr Alexandra Anna Spalek – Dr Louise McNally | When Verbs Stretch: How Grammar Shapes Figurative Language

Dec 9, 2025 | arts and humanities

About this episode

Language is full of creativity, but that creativity follows rules we don’t always notice. When we say a politician “swept the election” or that someone is “cut off from their friends,” we’re not talking about literal sweeping or cutting. Yet, somehow, these figurative uses feel natural. But do they follow the same grammatical logic as their literal counterparts? This is the puzzle that linguists Louise McNally, from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and Alexandra Anna Spalek, from the University of Oslo, set out to solve. Their research explores whether verbs carry their core grammatical features with them even when they shift into metaphorical territory. Read More

To test this, McNally and Spalek compared English and Spanish verbs that seem like close twins: sweep and barrer, cut and cortar. Both sweep and barrer describe cleaning with a broom; while both cut and cortar describe a particular way of separating something. But when you look at how people use these verbs in figurative ways, subtle but important differences emerge.

A key reason lies in how the two languages build meaning.

One important difference between English and Spanish involves how each language expresses actions and their outcomes. In English, verbs like “sweep” focus on what’s happening, without tying the action directly to the result. This allows for a wider variety of metaphorical uses of this verb. For example, when we say “a storm swept across the coast” or “a wave of excitement swept through the crowd,” we are emphasizing the movement itself, even if nothing physical is being moved.

In contrast, Spanish verbs like “barrer” combine the action with its outcome. This means that when we use this verb, it naturally implies that something has been cleared away. So, if we say a storm “barrió” through an area, it suggests destruction, not just the storm passing through.

A similar point holds for cut versus cortar. In English, cut can describe partial changes. It is therefore suitable to refer to metaphorical reductions, like “cutting prices” or “cutting corners.” But in Spanish, cortar almost always signals a full severing unless a modifier like “partially” is added.

The team’s research demonstrates that figurative language is not a free-for-all. It faithfully carries traces of the grammar embedded in literal meaning. Their findings challenge theories that treat figurative meaning as detached from grammar. They argue that figurative language is shaped by the same event structures that underlie literal meaning, such as whether an action has an endpoint, whether it implies change, and how participants are affected.

This work also offers a window into how our minds build connections between concrete and abstract ideas. When we talk about emotions that “sweep over us” or expenses we need to “cut back,” we’re not just being poetic. We’re relying on the hidden grammar of our language to make those metaphors feel natural.