5.2 Conceptual Relations: Metaphors
The concepts expressed by words and expressions are interrelated in many ways, creating very large conceptual networks. As illustrated in a model proposed by Collins and Quillian in Figure 6.6 concepts are represented by nodes in a network: each concept is inherently associated with several attributes (i.e. , semantic features ) and it is connected either closely or distantly with other concepts in the network. One common link found in the diagram is inclusion, which relates superordinate terms (e.g., animal ) and their hyponyms (e.g., bird and fish) in a hierarchical manner.
Another common type of links which creates the interrelations among concepts is a metaphor. Unlike inclusion, a metaphor does not link concepts in a straightforward way; rather, it involves an analogy between two concepts which are apparently very different. Thus, a metaphor tends to be first detected as anomalous. Language users need to be able to identity the resemblances between the two different concepts in order to construct and understand the intended meaning of the metaphor.
A metaphor is formally defined as the process of understanding one concept in terms of another. The concept being described is called the target domain while the comparison concept is called the source domain. A metaphor causes the transference of semantic properties from the source conceptual domain to the target conceptual domain. For example, in the metaphorical expression in (33), the concept of “argument” is understood in terms of the concept of “ war” ; “argument” is thus the target domain which is compared with “war” the source domain. The analogy between the two concepts is based on the fact that like “ war”, “argument” involves some kind of fighting (33) she annihilated him in the debate.
Metaphors are prevalent in everyday use of language. Usually, they do not occur haphazardly; the underlying basis for one metaphor is carried on in various expressions and used by different speaker. Take, for example, the time metaphor in English. For this type of metaphor, the abstract concept of time is treated as a concrete object of value which can be saved, wasted, or invested. The metaphorical sentences in (34) suggest that there is a tendency among English speakers to think of time as a commodity.
(34) a. It is a waste of time trying to change his mind.
b. He spent a lot of time writing this great novel.
c. Fixing this fax machine cost me more than an hour.
d. You should learn how to use your time more profitably.
e. The new plan will save us a lot of time.
Apparently there is no inherent similarity between time and valuable things such as gold or money. What beings these two concepts together is the perception, based in part on culture and in part on the feelings shared by all speakers, that time is like a valuable object that can be gained and lost.
Constructed from a very similar perspective, the idea metaphor involves the treatment of the abstract concept of idea as a concrete object. This type of metaphor is based on the perception that the two concepts can be perceived by senses. Examples of idea metaphors are given in (35).
(35) a. His explanation about the event smells odd to me.
b. I think I could grasp all the main points of her presentation.
c. It took me a while to see her point.
d. Your idea sounds very logical.
Another metaphor frequently found in everyday English is the spatial metaphor, which involves the use of words that are associated with spatial orientation to talk about psychological states. The sentences in (36) are spatial metaphors involving happiness and those in (37) are spatial metaphors involving unhappiness.
(36) a. I’m feeling up
b. My spirits rose.
c. You’re in high spirits.
(37) a. I’m feeling down.
b. My spirits sank.
c. He’s really low these days.
6. Sentence Interpretation
Like words, sentences carry meaning. The meaning of most words is conventional, derived from arbitrary pairings between from and meaning. Speakers recognize the meaning of words in a language when they know such conventional and arbitrary mappings of from and meaning. On the other hand, determining the meaning of a sentence is not that straightforward. Since the number of sentences is unlimited, their meanings cannot be all listed in speakers’ lexicon, and thus it is impossible to learn the meanings of all sentences by memorization.
An important question that follows is how we retrieve the meaning of a sentence. To answer this question, let’s consider the pairs of sentences in (38) and (39).
(38) a. The teacher admired the boy.
b. The boy admired the teacher.
(39) a. The boy admired the teacher.
b. The teacher was admired by the boy.
Despite containing exactly the same words, the sentences in (38) describe different events; they have distinct meanings. On the contrary, the sentences in (39), which do not contain exactly the same set of words, are used to express basically the same meaning. One obvious factor which affects the semantics of these sentences is that the words of the sentences in each pair are arranged differently.
Based on the examples above, we can conclude that the meaning of a sentence is NOT simply retrieved by adding up the meaning of each of its individual words. Rather, the way words and phrases are arranged in the sentence partly determines the sentence’s meaning. In other words, in order to retrieve the meaning of a sentence, we need to rely on both the meaning of individual words it is composed of and also the syntactic structure in which the words appear.
This conclusion has led to the principle of compositionality, which serves as a criterion for interpreting the meaning of a sentence. The gist of the principle is that the meaning of a sentence is based on the meanings of the individual words and how these words are combined structurally.
The Principle of compositionality
The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its individual words and the manner in which the words are combined in syntactic structure.
The study of a sentence’s meaning is called compositional semantics, which suggests that the meaning of a sentence is derived from composing, or putting together, several components. These component are (i) the meanings of individual morphemes and words that make it up and (ii) the syntactic structures of the sentence. In this section, we will study two major aspects of the contribution of structure to the interpretation of sentences, i.e., constructional meaning and thematic roles.