The Ontogenesis of Metaphor: Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers Seen as Cognitive Discovery Procedures

The research for this paper was conducted in the Department of Ayacucho during 1975 and 1976 under the sponsorship of The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02 and a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Billie Jean Isbell is responsible for the theoretical formulations in the paper, which she wrote in English. Fredy Amilcar Roncalla Fernandez, the coauthor, collected nearly all of the data. He is a native speaker of Quechua and without his native intuitions and careful translations, this paper would not have been written.Metaphor, it is argued, plays an important function in cognitive and semantic development of Quechua-speaking children who engage in riddle games. It appears that riddling among the Quechua functions as a discovery procedure as children expand their cognitive operative structures and semantic domains.The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02; Social Science Research Counci