Metaphor and Lexical Semantics

This paper shows that several sorts of expressions cannot be interpreted metaphorically, including determiners, tenses, etc. Generally, functional categories cannot be interpreted metaphorically, while lexical categories can. This reveals a semantic property of functional categories, and it shows that metaphor can be used as a probe for investigating them. It also reveals an important linguistic constraint on metaphor. The paper argues this constraint applies to the interface between the cognitive systems for language and metaphor. However, the constraint does not completely prevent structural elements of language from being available to the metaphor system. The paper shows that linguistic structure within the lexicon, specifically, aspectual structure, is available to the metaphor system. This paper takes as its starting point an observation about which sorts of expressions can receive metaphorical interpretations. Surprisingly, there are a number of expressions that cannot be interpreted metaphorically. Quantifier expressions (i.e. determiners) provide a good example. Consider a richly metaphorical sentence like: ∗Versions of this paper were presented at A Figure of Speech: Conference on Metaphor, University of Latvia, Riga, 2007, the UC Davis ‘Salon’, 2008, and the Paris-Stanford Conference on Meaning, Context and Communication, Stanford University, 2008. I am grateful to all the participants at those events for valuable discussions. Thanks also to Robert May, Adam Sennet, Paul Teller, and Michael Wedin for discussions and comments on earlier drafts, and to Greg Damico and Francesca Merlin for judgments and help with Italian. The students in my classes at UC Davis in Fall 2008 also provided judgments. Finally, special thanks to Liz Camp for answering my many naive questions about metaphor.