Computer Interpretation of Metaphoric Phrases

4The Role of Abstraction

Verbal cross – modal metaphor in the syntactic/semantic format to be handled depends on abstraction in two different ways. First, the “object” is, conventionally speaking, “abstract.” Second, in order to overcome the domain inconsistency between verb and object, the verbal concept must be generalized in the form of abstract components to accommodate its object (syntactic direct object or subject).

4.1"Abstract” objects

Pullum [14], musing on a definition of a noun, recalls writing in a previous article,19 “What we regard as a thing, or a kind of stuff, is determined by what our language provides us with nouns for.” He cites a 1929 survey article on Vienna Circle thought [5] with the quote: “Ordinary language uses the ...