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From: mike%brandeis.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: metaphors
Message-ID: <12214@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Apr-84 15:57:13 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12214
Posted: Thu Apr  5 15:57:13 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Apr-84 08:30:54 EST
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From:  Michael Listman <mike%brandeis.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>

       I am interested in finding information on the extent of
natural language research and expectations.

       In particular, I would like to find out if any research
has been done on comprehension of metaphors.  I realize that
this would present problems such as what to do upon
encountering a metaphor that one (or a system) has never
before encountered.

      Take as an example,

             "Man is a wolf"

      - although it seems obvious to a human, how does one know
which aspects of wolf to apply to man?

      As another example, how do we know that

             "Man is a Bic pen"

is a bad metaphor?  Do we exhaust all the features of each ( man
and Bic pen) and decide that not enough of them are similar enough
for a reasonable comparison?  This seems plausible, but I could
imagine a situation in a discourse where this or a similar metaphor
would make perfect sense (please don't ask me to).

       I believe that in pursuing research in this direction, we
will eventually attain the knowledge to build a psychologically real
natural language understander, which I believe is the only way we
will ever attain a system that can approximate human comprehension.

       If anyone can point me toward research in this area, or
references, or simply guess as to where research like this will lead
in the near future (or ever) please respond as soon as possible.


                                  --- Michael Listman