| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/C538943/1 |
| Title: |
Coping with the Open-Endedness of Everyday Metaphorical Language: theory, corpus study and computational implementation. |
| Principal Investigator: |
Barnden, Professor JA |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
School of Computer Science |
| Organisation: |
University of Birmingham |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 July 2005 |
Ends: |
30 November 2008 |
Value (£): |
371,976
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Comput./Corpus Linguistics |
Human Communication in ICT |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Suppose I wish to say something about a particular aspect of my experience, -a target domain, and that for various reasons, I either do not have, or cannot immediately retrieve, the vocabulary that directly concerns what I wish to say. I can proceed if I pretend that the target is a type of something else - a source domain- just so long as the the vocabulary needed to describe it is extensive enough and easily accessible, and if I can assume that the correspondence between the two domains is conventional or widely accepted.Work in Conceptual Metaphor Theory has shown that for many areas of experience there exist such conventional and systematic correspondences, (i.e., a mapping) between entities in the source and target domains and many specific correspondences have been described and catalogued. For example, I can say that I have 'an idea in my mind' even though the mind is not a physical space or vessel and ideas are not really objects that can physically be in something. I can also talk of 'an idea being in the far reaches of my mind', so exploiting the fact that for physical spaces, objects can be located near or far away.In a previous project we argued, and demonstrated using an implemented computer system, that correspondences between entities in the source and target domains should not be thought of as being one-to-one. Rather, a degree of reasoning using the entities in the source domain takes place. Thus, if something is far away, then it is hard to manipulate. We further assumed that the source to target correspondences involve the conclusion of such reasoning processes. Thus there may be a mapping between physical manipulation and mental manipulation, but no specific target correspondent for 'far reaches'. Note that if it is conclusions that are mapped, then the exact choice of words used is not very important. I could have used the terms 'back' or 'distant corners' etc. of my mind and conveyed the same information.However, although a range of different words may be used, there is a limit on what I can do with a finite set of correspondences. It would be helpful to be able to add additional or adjunct correspondences to an existing mapping. In this context, note that a correspondence between physical manipulation and mental manipulation is not quite sufficient for the interpretation of the 'far reaches'. What is important is the low DEGREE of manipulation. Interestingly, unlike the standard mapping where entities change, this low DEGREE is unchanging between source and target. Furthermore, DEGREES do not just arise for the notion of physical manipulability nor for metaphors for mind, but can be added to other mappings. And, we have identified other such 'unchanging' attributes, relations etc, such as VALUE-JUDGMENT and CAUSATION, which appear to apply to any metaphorical mapping.In the proposed research, we plan to investigate further these unchanging 'adjunct' mappings. We wish to expand our computer system -ATT-Meta- to deal with many of them and attempt to give precise and formal descriptions. We also intend to annotate a corpus, or large body of text, with metaphors, indicating where appropriate what invariant properties the metaphorical passages are conveying. We then intend to create a databank of metaphorical extracts showing types of 'changeable mappings cross-categorized with members of the list of invariant properties that we hope to have uncovered. Finally, our existing AT-Meta system didn't actually map between physical manipulation and mental manipulation. The actual rule was 'degree of physical manipulation' mapping to 'degree of mental manipulation'. But for the reasons given above, this missed a generalization about the ubiquity of DEGREE. A preliminary investigation suggests that many published compendia of metaphorical correspondences have missed similar generalizations and we wish to re-examine these with a view to factoring out the invariance to see what changes in metaphorical mappings.
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.bham.ac.uk |