This study examines how first language (L1) English speakers understand metonymy in second language (L2) Korean, in order to explore the influence of universal concepts and language-specific conventions on how meaning is extended in interlanguage. An acceptability judgment task and a sense identification task revealed that L2 Korean metonymy knowledge began relatively early, and conventional metonymy and pragmatic reference transfer were treated differently in significant ways. The results have implications for how the different levels of meaning computation (e.g. lexical, pragmatic) interact with one another in interlanguage, as well as on the debate between radical pragmatics vs. rule-based theories of metonymy in linguistics.
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