Table Of ContentFrames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language
Constructional Approaches to Language
The series brings together research conducted within different constructional models and
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include cognitive linguistics, conceptual semantics, interaction and discourse, as well as
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Editors
Jan-Ola Östman Kyoko Ohara
University of Helsinki Keio University, Japan
Helsinki, Finland
Advisory Board
Peter Auer Mirjam Fried Knud Lambrecht
University of Freiburg, Germany Charles University, Prague, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Czech Republic
Hans C. Boas Michael Tomasello
University of Texas at Austin, USA Adele E. Goldberg Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Princeton University, USA Anthropology, Germany
William Croft
University of New Mexico, USA Seizi Iwata Arnold M. Zwicky
Osaka City University, Japan Stanford University, USA
Charles J. Fillmore
Int. Computer Science Institute, Paul Kay
Berkeley, USA University of California, Berkeley,
USA
Volume 14
Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language
by Karen Sullivan
Frames and Constructions
in Metaphoric Language
Karen Sullivan
University of Queensland
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sullivan, Karen.
Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language / Karen Sullivan.
p. cm. (Constructional Approaches to Language, issn 1573-594X ; v. 14)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Metaphor. 2. Structural linguistics. 3. Construction grammar. I. Title.
P301.5.M48S84 2013
809’.915--dc23 2012042208
isbn 978 90 272 0436 3 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 7240 9 (Eb)
© 2013 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
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Table of contents
chapter 1
Metaphoric language and metaphoric thought 1
1.1 Conceptual metaphor 1
1.2 Words and constructions 2
1.3 Objectives and overview of the book 10
1.4 Framework and terminology 11
chapter 2
Frames in metaphor and meaning 17
2.1 Opening the semantic toolbox 17
2.2 What are semantic frames? 17
2.3 What are domains? 20
2.4 Frame structure in metaphor input domains 23
2.5 A frame-semantic model of autonomy and dependence 29
chapter 3
Frames and lexical choice in metaphor 35
3.1 Introduction and methodology 35
3.2 The Invariance Principle 36
3.3 Having a sunny disposition: Lexical choice in happiness is light 38
3.4 A brilliant plan: Lexical choice in intelligence is light-emission 41
3.5 The metaphoric and non-metaphoric senses of bright 43
3.6 Understanding is seeing and comprehensibility is visibility 44
3.7 Adjectives vs. adverbs: Brilliantly, clearly, brightly and sunnily 46
chapter 4
Frames in metonymic inferencing 49
4.1 Unmasking a metaphor look-alike 49
4.2 A frame-based model of metonymic inferencing 50
4.3 See ‘meet with’ and be seeing ‘be dating’ 54
4.4 Comparison with metaphor 58
Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language
chapter 5
Two types of adjective construction in metaphor 63
5.1 Constructional constraints on metaphor 63
5.2 Domain constructions 64
5.3 Predicating modifier constructions 76
5.4 Compounds 83
chapter 6
Argument structure constructions in metaphor 87
6.1 Verbs and their arguments 87
6.2 Intransitives 89
6.3 Domain-neutral items 91
6.4 Transitive constructions 92
6.5 Resultatives 95
6.6 Ditransitive constructions 100
6.7 Equations 104
6.8 A note on similes 110
chapter 7
Metaphoric preposition phrases and closed-class items 115
7.1 Variability in preposition phrases 115
7.2 Relational nouns in PPs 117
7.3 Event nouns in PPs 119
7.4 The role of prepositions in specifying relations 123
7.5 Limitations on metaphoric closed-class items 125
7.6 Other closed classes 127
chapter 8
Repeated domain evocation and xyz constructions 131
8.1 Combining metaphoric constructions 131
8.2 Multiple target-domain items 133
8.3 Multiple source-domain items 135
8.4 The xyz constructions 138
8.5 Multiple source- and target-domain items 141
8.6 Combining conceptual metaphors 143
Table of contents
chapter 9
Metaphoric constructions beyond the clause 149
9.1 A range of constructional complexity 149
9.2 Relative clauses 150
9.3 Conditionals 152
9.4 Parallelism 159
9.5 Negation of the literal 161
9.6 Allegory 163
chapter 10
Conclusion 167
10.1 Limitations 168
10.2 Building bridges 169
References 173
Primary sources 179
Index of constructions 181
Index 183
chapter 1
Metaphoric language and metaphoric thought
1.1 Conceptual metaphor
Metaphoric language was studied for thousands of years before metaphor was con-
sidered a cognitive phenomenon. Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BCE) describes
metaphoric language as “giving the thing a name that belongs to something else,”
such as when old age is called “evening” or “sunset of life” (Barnes 1984: 2332).
Aristotle presents metaphor as a linguistic ornamentation akin to the use of for-
eign words in a text, not as a way of thinking or a cognitive strategy. It is only
relatively recently that metaphor has been reinterpreted as primarily a cognitive
process that surfaces in language, rather than a rhetorical strategy that exists only
at the level of language itself.
According to the conceptual view of metaphor as outlined in Metaphors We
Live By (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), metaphor is a cognitive process that allows one
domain of experience, the target domain, to be reasoned about in terms of an-
other, the source domain. The target domain is usually an abstract concept such as
life, whereas the source domain is typically a more concrete concept, such as a
day. The metaphor allows us to export conceptual structure about the more con-
crete domain to the more abstract target domain. We have repeated experience of
days and understand their structure well, whereas life is only experienced once,
and is in general more complicated than a day. Conceptualizing life as a day al-
lows us to map the various structures comprising a day onto aspects of a life,
understanding our birth as the dawn, old age as the evening, and so forth.
These correspondences, called mappings, allow us to make sense of our lives, un-
derstand our stage of life, and appreciate that stage (working while the sun is high,
savoring the sunset, and so on). According to conceptual theories of metaphor,
these systems of mappings, and their applications to reasoning and cognition, are
the primary function of metaphor. Referring to a target-domain idea with a source-
domain name, such as calling old age a sunset, is seen as an incidental effect of
this underlying correspondence between conceptual domains.
The proposal that metaphors might be conceptual structures, not mere lin-
guistic decoration, revolutionized metaphor investigation. In the surge of interest
in conceptual metaphor that followed the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s
Metaphors We Live By in 1980, metaphoric language was often brushed aside as an
Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language
epiphenomenon of underlying conceptual structure. Ironically, during the same
decades in which interest in metaphoric language waned, theories of grammar and
meaning arose that might have been especially well suited to investigating meta-
phoric language. These included theories of grammar that incorporate semantics,
as in Construction Grammar, and cognitively based theories of semantics, such as
Frame Semantics. However, early conceptual metaphor theorists were determined
to institute metaphor as a conceptual phenomenon, and this required establishing
metaphor as a “not just a matter of language – that is, mere words” but as the con-
ceptual structures that generate linguistic metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 6).
The lack of interest in “mere words” is perhaps unfortunate, because the find-
ings of conceptual metaphor research could be interpreted as rendering metaphoric
language more mysterious, rather than less so. After all, the greater complexity we
attribute to conceptual metaphor, the more intriguing the workings of metaphoric
language become. For instance, even a brief metaphoric phrase such as economic
health effortlessly conveys the conceptualization of economies as bodies and au-
tomatically makes available the other mappings in this metaphor. Economic health
may be infected with illnesses, may require a cure or remedy, and so forth. Somehow
the simple phrase economic health provides a gateway to the metaphor an economy
is a body and all of its mappings and associated logic, such as the fact that an in-
fection weakens the body, or that a cure will counteract an illness. Given the
findings of conceptual metaphor theory regarding the cognitive complexity of
metaphor, our ability to communicate a metaphor using only a few words is an
impressive and fascinating feat.
1.2 Words and constructions
What linguistic resources enable us to engage in the complex task of metaphoric
language? Clearly, metaphoric language can involve metaphoric words. For ex-
ample, the word wealth can refer to a literal accumulation of money or valuables,
but it can also refer metaphorically to spiritual attributes, as in the metaphoric
phrase spiritual wealth. When wealth is modified by spiritual, the item wealth is
understood as referring to spiritual properties, rather than to financial accumula-
tion. That is, wealth is metaphoric when it occurs in spiritual wealth.
However, words are not enough to convey metaphor. The mere juxtaposition
of spiritual and wealth does not necessitate a metaphoric interpretation. The noun
phrase spiritual concerns about wealth refers to unease about literal monetary
wealth, even though the example involves the words spiritual and wealth. The items
spiritual and wealth apparently have to occur in a particular grammatical relation,
in which spiritual modifies wealth, to ensure that metaphor is communicated.
