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<Paper uid="W03-1405">
  <Title>Conceptual Metaphors: Ontology-based representation and corpora driven Mapping Principles</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
2 The Conceptual Mapping Model and
Ontology
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Ahrens (2002) proposed that the question asked by Lakoff above ('Is there a general principle governing how these linguistic expressions about journeys are used to characterize love?') should be answered by examining the lexical correspondences that exist between a source and target domain. She proposes that the linguistic expressions that are used metaphorically can be analyzed in terms of the entities, qualities and functions that can map between a source and a target domain.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> When these conventionalized metaphorical expressions have been analyzed, they are compared with the real world knowledge that the source domain entails, and an underlying reason for these mappings is then postulated.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> For example, she points out that in the conceptual metaphor IDEA IS BUILDING in Mandarin, the linguistic expressions relating to the concept of foundation, stability and construction were mapped (i.e. are conventional linguistic examples) while concepts relating to position of the building, internal wiring and plumbing, the exterior of the building, windows and doors were not (and these are the concepts that are in the real world knowledge of the source domain). Thus she postulated that the target domain of IDEA uses the source domain of BUILDING in order to emphasize the concept of structure. Thus, when someone talks about ideas and want to express positive notions concerning organization, they use the source domain of BUILDING. The Mapping Principle formulated in this case was therefore the following: null (1) Mapping principle for IDEA IS BUILDING: Idea is understood as building because buildings involve a (physical) structure and ideas involve an (abstract) structure. (Ahrens 2002) When IDEA is talked about in terms of FOOD, however, the expressions that are mapped are 'ingredient', 'spoil', 'flavorless', 'full', 'taste', 'chew', 'digest' and 'absorb'. Mandarin Chinese, in contrast with English, does not have conventional expressions relating to 'cooking' or 'stewing' of ideas. Thus, the postulated Mapping Principle is: Idea is understood as food because food involves being eaten and digested (by the body) and ideas involved being taken in and processed (by the mind) (Ahrens 2002).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Thus, IDEA uses the source domains of BUILDING and FOOD for different reasons, namely to convey information related to 'structure' or 'processing' (i.e. 'understanding') respectively. Thus, it is similar to the Contemporary Theory of metaphor in that it supposes that there are systematic mappings between a source and target domain, but it goes a step further in postulating an underlying reason for that mapping. The CM Model predicts that conventional metaphors, novel metaphors that follow the mapping principle and novel metaphors that don't follow the mapping principle will be rated differently on interpretability and acceptability scales when other factors, such as frequency are controlled for. This was, in fact, found to be the case (Ahrens 2002). Other theories of metaphor processing such as Gentner's Structure Mapping Model (Gentner and Wolff 2000), or the Attributive Categorization Hypothesis (McGlone 1996) do not distinguish between novel and conventional metaphors, nor do they suppose that there might be different types of novel metaphors.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The CM model of metaphor presupposed structured shared source domain knowledge. For a mapping to be conventionalized and understood by speakers, the content and structure of the source domain knowledge must be a priori knowledge and should not have to be acquired. How to define and verify such structured knowledge is a challenge to this theory. We attempt to meet this challenge in two ways: first, by assuming that source domain knowledge representation is instantiated by a shared upper ontology, such as SUMO. If the source domain knowledge representation is indeed ontology-based, we can adopt the null hypothesis that the mapping principle is based on one of the inference rules encoded on that particular conceptual node. In consequence, we can take the second step by examining actual mappings of linguistic expressions in corpora, and extract the most frequent mappings to verify the null hypothesis. This will also allow us to investigate if it is the case that frequency of use in a newspaper corpora necessarily reflects the underlying mapping principle, an issue which is currently open to interpretation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> The integration of an upper ontology to the CM model has the following theoretical implications: null First, the source domain knowledge representation is now pre-defined and constrained. Second, the validity of such hypothesis will in turn support the robustness and universality of the proposed upper ontology.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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