New Generation Computing, 24(2006)223-240
Ohmsha, Ltd. and Springer
Received 5 October 2005
Revised manuscript received 3 February 2006
Analogy is a powerful boundary-transcending process that exploits a conceptual system's ability to perform controlled generalization in one domain and re-specialization into another. The result of this semantic leap is the transference of meaning from one concept to another from which metaphor derives its name (literally: to carry over). Such generalization and re-specialization can be achieved using a variety of re-representation techniques, most notably abstraction via a taxonomic backbone, or selective projection via structure-mapping over propositional content. In this paper we explore both the extent to which a bilingual lexical ontology for English and Chinese, called HowNet, can support each technique, and the extent to which both are, ultimately, variations of the same process of creative re-representation.
Keywords:Analogy, Abstraction, Structure-mapping,
Ontologies, Lexical Semantics.