Abstract
The distinction between literal and figurative language (metonymies, metaphors, etc.) is often not made formally explicit, or, if formal criteria exist, insufficient. This poses problems for an adequate computational treatment of these phenomena. The basic criterion for delineating literal from figurative speech we propose is centered around the notion of categorization conflicts that follow from the context of the utterance. In addition, we consider the problem of granularity, which is posed by the dependence of our approach on the underlying ontology.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Dawn G. Blasko and Cynthia M. Connine. Effects of familiarity and aptness on metaphor processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19(2):295–308, 1993. 145
Jaime G. Carbonell. Metaphor: an inescapable phenomenon in natural-language comprehension. In W. G. Lehnert and M. H. Ringle, editors, Strategies for Natural Language Processing, pages 415–434. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982. 133, 144
Roger Chaffin. The concept of a semantic relation. In A. Lehrer and E. F. Kittay, editors, Frames, Fields and Contrasts, pages 253–288. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1992. 139
D. A. Cruse. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 134
Dan C. Fass. met*: a method for discriminating metonymy and metaphor by computer. Computational Linguistics, 17(1):49–90, 1991. 133, 144, 144, 145
Gilles Fauconnier. Espaces Mentaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984. 144, 145
Dedre Gentner, Brian Falkenhainer, and Janice Skorstad. Viewing metaphors as analogy: the good, the bad, and the ugly. In Y. Wilks, editor, Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, pages 171–177. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989. 133, 143
Raymond Gibbs. Categorisation and metaphor understanding. Psychological Review, 99(3):572–577, 1992. 144
Herbert P. Grice. Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan, editors, Syntax and Semantics, volume 3, pages 41–58. New York: Academic Press, 1975. 144
Udo Hahn and Martin Romacker. Text understanding for knowledge base generation in the SynDiKATe system. In Database and Expert Systems Applications. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference — DEXA’99. Florence, Italy, August 30–September 3, 1999. Berlin: Springer, 1999. 140
Udo Hahn, Susanne Schacht, and Norbert Bröker. Concurrent, object-oriented natural language parsing: the ParseTalk model. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 41(1/2):179–222, 1994. 140
Jerry R. Hobbs, Mark E. Stickel, Douglas E. Appelt, and Paul Martin. Interpretation as abduction. Artificial Intelligence, 63(1/2):69–142, 1993. 144, 145
Bipin Indurkhya. Constrained semantic transference: a formal theory of metaphors. In A. Prieditis, editor, Analogica, pages 129–157. Morgan Kaufmann, 1988. 143, 143
A. Inhoff, S.D. Lima, and P.J. Carroll. Contextual effects on metaphor comprehension in reading. Memory and Cognition, 12:558–567, 1984. 145
Ray Jackendoff. Semantic Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. 134
Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague, NL: Mouton Publishers, 1956. 146
Eva F. Kittay. Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1987. 144, 144
George Lakoff. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 144
George Lakoff and M. Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980. 133, 139, 139, 143, 144, 145, 145
Katja Markert and Udo Hahn. On the interaction of metonymies and anaphora. In IJCAI’97 — Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 1010–1015. Nagoya, Japan, August 23–29, 1997. 140, 141, 143
James Martin. Computer understanding of conventional metaphoric language. Cognitive Science, 16:233–270, 1992. 144, 145
Peter Norvig. Marker passing as a weak method for inferencing. Cognitive Science, 13(4):569–620, 1989. 145
Geoffrey Nunberg. Transfers of meaning. Journal of Semantics, 12:109–132, 1995. 144, 146
James Pustejovsky. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. 133, 133, 144, 145, 146
Martin Romacker, Katja Markert, and Udo Hahn. Lean semantic interpretation. In IJCAI’99 — Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Stockholm, Sweden, July 31–August 6, 1999. 135, 140
John R. Searle. Metaphor. In Andrew Ortony, editor, Metaphor and thought, pages 93–123. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979. 144
David Stallard. Two kinds of metonymy. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 87–94. Columbus, Ohio, USA, 22–26 June, 1993. 133, 140, 145
Michael Strube and Udo Hahn. Functional centering. In ACL’96 — Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 270–277. University of California at Santa Cruz, California, 24–27 June, 1996. 140
Roger Tourangeau and Robert Sternberg. Understanding and appreciating metaphors. Cognition, 11:203–244, 1982. 144
M. Turner. Categories and analogies. In D. H. Helman, editor, Analogical Reasoning, pages 3–24. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. 144, 144, 145
M. Winston, R. Chaffin, and D. Herrmann. A taxonomy of part-whole relationships. Cognitive Science, 11:417–444, 1987. 139
William A. Woods and James G. Schmolze. The Kl-One family. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 23(2/5):133–177, 1992. 134
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hahn, U., Markert, K. (1999). On the Formal Distinction between Literal and Figurative Language. In: Barahona, P., Alferes, J.J. (eds) Progress in Artificial Intelligence. EPIA 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1695. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48159-1_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48159-1_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66548-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48159-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive