A Microfeature Based Approach Towards Metaphor Interpretation

Abstract

This paper advocates a microfeature based approach towards developing computational models for metaphor interpretation. It is argued that the existing models based on semantic networks and mappings of complex symbolic structures are insufficient and inappropriate for modeling metaphors. A connectionist model of metaphor interpretation based on microfeatures is presented, which tries to take into account some important issues, such as accurate capturing of similarity, automatic formation of features, contextual effects, elimination of long paths in conceptual hierarchies, salience imbalance, and feature enhancement. Some of these issues have broad implications in cognitive modeling. 1 Introduction Metaphor is an important cognitive phenomenon, and it is of great interest to AI, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and literary studies. In fact there has been a surge of interests in the past few decades in the philosophy and linguistics communities in the nature and the ...