This paper shows that several sorts of expressions cannot be interpreted
metaphorically, including determiners, tenses, etc. Generally,
functional categories cannot be interpreted metaphorically, while lexical
categories can. This reveals a semantic property of functional
categories, and it shows that metaphor can be used as a probe for
investigating them. It also reveals an important linguistic constraint
on metaphor. The paper argues this constraint applies to the interface
between the cognitive systems for language and metaphor. However,
the constraint does not completely prevent structural elements
of language from being available to the metaphor system. The paper
shows that linguistic structure within the lexicon, specifically, aspectual
structure, is available to the metaphor system.
This paper takes as its starting point an observation about which sorts of
expressions can receive metaphorical interpretations. Surprisingly, there are a
number of expressions that cannot be interpreted metaphorically. Quantifier
expressions (i.e. determiners) provide a good example. Consider a richly
metaphorical sentence like: