Metaphor and Lexical Semantics

Abstract

This paper shows that several sorts of expressions cannot be inter- preted metaphorically, including determiners, tenses, etc. Generally, functional categories cannot be interpreted metaphorically, while lex- ical 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 inter- face between the cognitive systems for language and metaphor. How- ever, 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, speci cally, aspec- tual structure, is available to the metaphor system.