은유의 형식과 의미기술

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to represent the meaning of metaphors depending on their types. Miller(1979) classified the metaphorical expressions into nominal metaphor, predicative metaphor, and sentential metaphor, and represented their meanings such as nominal metaphor; Be(x,y) → (∃F)(∃G) {SIM [F(x), G(y)], and predicative metaphor; G(x) → (∃F)(∃y) [SIM [F(x), G(y)]] when a x is not G, and sentential metaphor; G(x) → (∃F)(∃y) [SIM [F(x), G(y)]] when y is not a discourse referent. However, those classifications of metaphors and semantic representations are not appropriate to formalize the metaphorical expressions and their meanings. First, Miller's classification does not cover the various types of metaphors. Second, the operator SIM is not necessary to describe the metaphorical meaning. Third, it is very hard to give the meaning of the argument forms of F(x) and G(y), In order to solve the problems above mentioned, we employ the subatomic semantics by Kearns(2000), which expended and revised Davidsons(1967). Every expression of metaphor can be decomposed into a subatomic formula, so that it is not necessary to define the meaning of F(x) or G(y), and to implement the abstract operator SIM. In addition to these, Complex Noun Phrase such as “river of time” can not be analyzed in Miller's mechanism because this complex noun phrase expression does not belong to the three types of classification that Miller(1979) analyzed. However, we can represent the metaphorical meaning of Complex NP more clearly. For instance, the expression “river of time” can be represented such as ∃e,e'[Pass(e) & Flow(e') & Theme(time,e) & Theme(river, e') & Imply(e, e')]. We also give the representations of the linguistic or metaphorical meaning of the expressions with evaluative and evidential adverbs.