The Logic of Metaphor

The Logic of Metaphor uses techniques from possible worlds semantics to provide formal truth-conditions for many grammatical classes of metaphors. It gives logically precise and practically useful syntactic and semantic rules for generating and interpreting metaphors. These rules are implemented in a working computer program. The book treats the lexicon as a conceptual network with semantics provided by an intensional predicate calculus. It gives rules for finding analogies in such networks. It shows how to analyse texts containing metaphors both syntactically and semantically and how to use structural similarities between parts of possible worlds to provide truth-conditions for metaphors. Meanings for metaphors are linked to the modal logics of identity and indiscernibility. The book shows how to extend deductive and adductive inference systems so as to handle metaphors and how to handle novel metaphorical word-senses. Indispensable reading for philosophers, logicians, linguists and computer scientists.