Application of the ATT-Meta Metaphor-Understanding Approach to Selected Examples from Goatly Technical Report CSRP-0101

This report provides a measure of relatively objective evaluation of our ATT-Meta approach to conducting some of the reasoning needed in the understanding of metaphorical utt er nces. The approach is partially implemented in our ATT-Meta system. The approach and system are n ot described in detail here. The utterances of most interest in this report are map-transcending on es: that is, ones that rest on metaphorical views (conceptual metaphors) that are familiar to the unders tander but transcend the views by using aspects of the source-domain that are not handled by the bet ween-domain mappings the metaphorical views involve. The report evaluates the approach (not the im pl mented system) by applying it to fifteen examples. The source of our examples was a well-known 1997 b ook on metaphor by Andrew Goatly. We took all the examples that could strongly be claimed to be mun dane, map-transcending and non-sidelined (see body of report for this last concept). The report sh w that the approach successfully produces what we claim to be the main pieces of information conveyed by the e xamples. The report also vindicates our stance that metaphorical mappings should by default not be extended to cope with aspects of utterances that are those mappings do not deal with: rather, withi n-source-domain reasoning should be used to link those aspects to source-domain aspects that those m appings do deal with. Also, even though of the fifteen examples six require some degree of map-exten sion, the amount of extension is small and its nature is mostly strongly indicated by the wording i n the examples. It requires little in the way of elaborate search for partial isomorphism between domains.