An examination of the use of metaphors by children summarizes the views of metaphor as found in the literature and describes a theoretical framework for the study of such utterances in young children by integrating two hypotheses. It is postulated that the young child uses metaphor to test new inferences about various kinds of relationships in the world in terms of the response obtained from the listener. This viewpoint brings together the Piagetian and Speech Act hypotheses, and makes it possible to ask more specific questions about metaphor production by children, dependent on the further development of some existing investigating procedures and criteria. It is proposed that this approach takes the phenomenon of child metaphor out of the category of description where it has been located until now. The report also includes a substantial list of references. (MSE)