Challenges in natural language processing: the case of metaphor (commentary)

This article comments on some ways in which metaphor is relevant to practical language technology, for either text or speech. While the article mentions some deep problems, it nevertheless points out that certain issues are less troublesome than they might appear to be, and that metaphor in real discourse has some characteristics that could help, rather than hinder, practical discourse-processing. The article also mentions the author’s ongoing work on developing a new view of how metaphor and metonymy relate to each other. This view is based on a deconstruction into underlying dimensions.