Towards a Computational Approach to Conceptual Metaphor

Supervised by: Professor Jim Davies

One type of relational reasoning is metaphorical reasoning, in which we utilize knowledge of a well-understood concrete concept to a new, less-understood abstract concept. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is a long-standing cognitive model of how human beings perform metaphorical reasoning. Unfortunately, there remains a lack of research toward the development of a computational description and implementation of CMT. We describe a computational theory and Prolog implementation.