Systematicity and the Lexicon in Creative Metaphor

Aptness is an umbrella term that covers a multitude of issues in the interpretation and generation of creative metaphor. In this paper we concentrate on one of these issues --- the notion of lexical systematicity --- and explore its role in ascertaining the coherence of creative metaphor relative to the structure of the target concept being described. We argue that all else being equal, the most apt metaphors are those that resonate most with the way the target concept is literally and metaphorically organized. As such, the lexicon plays a key role in enforcing and recognizing aptness, insofar as this existing organization will already have been lexicalized. We perform our exploration in the context of WordNet, and describe how relational structures can be automatically extracted from this lexical taxonomy to facilitate the interpretation of creative metaphors.