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

2008, International Journal of Speech Technology

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 discourseprocessing. 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. Keywords Metaphor • Metonymy • Figurative language • Natural language understanding • Natural language technology • Natural language pragmatics • Discourse processing • Lexical resources • Language resources • Ontologies Of the many challenges facing the practical application of natural language processing, there is one in particular that has seen especially little serious computational attention: namely the problem of metaphor. Although many researchers not in the metaphor area may be tempted to think of metaphor as a peripheral problem (perhaps mostly to do with poetry and other literary language) it is in fact a pervasive feature of mundane language (conversation, newspaper articles, popular science writing, etc.). See for instance many of the contributions to a recent metaphor handbook (Gibbs 2008).

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