Unparalleled Creativity in Metaphor (and Analogy)

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Unparalleled Creativityin Metaphor(and Analogy)

John Barnden, School of Computer
Science, University of Birmingham, UK

• Take-Home Message re Handling Creativity within
  Metaphorical Expression
• Creative metaphorical wording, going beyond
  existing mappings, can often be processed
• without creating new source/target mappings to
  handle the unmapped elements,
• even when it is crucial for the meaning of the
  utterance.
• This is a liberating point, easing the task of
  accounting for creativity within metaphorical
  wording.

• including the case of non-verbal, e.g.
  pictorial, metaphor
• Eases the task of accounting for, e.g.,
• creative pictorial metaphor.

• Take-Home Message re Non-(Grand-)Creativity in
  the View of the Target
• So, the creativity in the wording is often not
  paralelled in the target and
• creative metaphorical wording often DOESNT give
  grandly creative new view of the target.
• Instead, it can exert fine and subtle control
  over what is transferred by already-known
  mappings
• and can express unusual (rather than creative)
  situations in the target domain.
• (The resulting message may be much more difficult
  to express without the metaphor.)

• Similarly Take-Home Message re Analogy
• Some creative parts of analogical sources do not
  have creative parallels in the target,
• but instead serve to (creatively) control how
  other parts of the analogy fit with the target.

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NON-PARALLELED but CRUCIAL CREATIVITY in wording
example 1 I dont think strings are attached.
If there are any theyre made of nylonI cant
see them.
source elements PARALLELED The strings Their
attachment Physical seeing DIFFICULTY (of seeing)
THEIR PARALLELS IN TARGET Behaviour-affecting
constraints The application of those
constraints Abstract noticing DIFFICULTY (of
abstract noticing)
source elements NOT PARALLELED The nylon. Being
made of. Translucency.
But the non-paralleled nylon and translucency
derived from it are still CRUCIAL through
implying the DIFFICULTY.
NON-PARALLELED but CRUCIAL CREATIVITY example 2
when Jackie expressed doubts about Phil, I
had to nurture those doubts as if they were tiny,
sickly kittens, until eventually they became
sturdy, healthy grievances, with their own
cat-flaps which allowed them to wander in and out
of our conversation at will.
source elements NOT PARALLELED The cat-ness of
the doubts and grievances. Their tininess,
sickliness, sturdiness, healthiness ask me
complex point The cat-flaps. The deliberateness
of the cats wandering.
One DERIVED source element that IS
paralleled The NON-deliberateness of the
wandering on the speakers part. This
non-deliberateness is a rich inference from the
nature of cats and cat-flaps, and ALTGHOUGH NOT
PARALLELED still has a CRUCIAL EFFECT on the
meaning.
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ATT-Meta Approach to Metaphor Understanding

• Other creativity-supporting aspects of ATT-Meta
• Transfer steps as just one type of reasoning
  step
• arbitrary intertwining
• View-Neutral Mapping Adjuncts see paper
• Metaphor Compounding
• No actual reliance on domains
• Reverse Transfer (target-to-source)
• Escapes from assuming per-sentence understanding

Direct Meaning of Utterance (lexico-compositional)
rich inference
Something Inferred using (largely) source-domain
knowledge
Something Inferred using (largely) source-domain
knowledge
Something Inferred using (largely) source-domain
knowledge
rich inference
Something about the target scenario
Transfer actions
Something Inferred using (largely) source-domain
knowledge
Something about the target scenario
Something about the target scenario