Archive for the ‘Metaphors’ Category

Metaphor Identification in Large Texts Corpora

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Metaphor Identification in Large Texts Corpora by Yair Neuman, Dan Assaf, Yohai Cohen, Mark Last, Shlomo Argamon, Newton Howard, Ophir Frieder. (Neuman Y, Assaf D, Cohen Y, Last M, Argamon S, et al. (2013) Metaphor Identification in Large Texts Corpora. PLoS ONE 8(4): e62343. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062343)

Abstract:

Identifying metaphorical language-use (e.g., sweet child) is one of the challenges facing natural language processing. This paper describes three novel algorithms for automatic metaphor identification. The algorithms are variations of the same core algorithm. We evaluate the algorithms on two corpora of Reuters and the New York Times articles. The paper presents the most comprehensive study of metaphor identification in terms of scope of metaphorical phrases and annotated corpora size. Algorithms’ performance in identifying linguistic phrases as metaphorical or literal has been compared to human judgment. Overall, the algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art algorithm with 71% precision and 27% averaged improvement in prediction over the base-rate of metaphors in the corpus.

A deep review of current work and promising new algorithms on metaphor identification.

I first saw this in Nat Torkinton’s Four short links: 14 May 2013.

Posted in Corpora, Metaphors | No Comments »

Metaphorical search engine finds creative new meanings

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Metaphorical search engine finds creative new meanings

From the post:

TYPING “love” into Google, I find the Wikipedia entry, a “relationship calculator” and Lovefilm, a DVD rental service. Doing the same in YossarianLives, a new search engine due to launch this year, I might receive quite different results: “river”, “sleep” and “prison”. Its creators claim YossarianLives is a metaphorical search engine, designed to spark creativity by returning disparate but conceptually related terms. So the results perhaps make sense if you accept that love can ebb and flow, provide rejuvenating comfort or just make you feel trapped.

“Today’s internet search tells us what the world already knows,” explains the CEO of YossarianLives, J. Paul Neeley. “We don’t want you to know what everyone else knows, we want you to generate new knowledge.” He says that metaphors help us see existing concepts in a new way and create innovative ideas. For example, using a Formula 1 pit crew as a metaphor for doctors in an emergency room has helped improve medical procedures. YossarianLives aims to create new metaphors for designers, artists, writers or even scientists.

The name is derived from the anti-hero of the novel Catch-22, as the company wants to solve the catch-22 of existing search engines, which they say help us to access current knowledge but also harm us by reinforcing that knowledge above all else.

Sounds too good to be true but good things do happen.

What do you think?

Posted in Metaphors, Search Engines | No Comments »

That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification

Sunday, May 1st, 2011

That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification by Chloé Kiddon and Yuriy Brun.

Abstract:

Humor identification is a hard natural language understanding problem. We identify a subproblem — the “that’s what she said” problem—with two distinguishing characteristics: (1) use of nouns that are euphemisms for sexually explicit nouns and (2) structure common in the erotic domain. We address this problem in a classification approach that includes features that model those two characteristics. Experiments on web data demonstrate that our approach improves precision by 12% over baseline techniques that use only word-based features.

A highly entertaining paper that examines a particular type of double entendre, which is itself a particular type of metaphor.

The authors note:

A “that’s what she said” (TWSS) joke is a type of double entendre. A double entendre, or adianoeta, is an expression that can be understood in two different ways: an innocuous, straightforward way, given the context, and a risqué way that indirectly alludes to a different, indecent context. To our knowledge, related research has not studied the task of identifying double entendres in text or speech. The task is complex and would require both deep semantic and cultural understanding to recognize the vast array of double entendres. We focus on a subtask of double entendre identification: TWSS recognition. We say a sentence is a TWSS if it is funny to follow that sentence with “that’s what she said”. (emphasis added)

It would be interesting to see a crowd-sourced topic map project on double entendre.

BTW, strictly for non-office enjoyment, see: TWSS, a site that collects TWSS stories.

Posted in Ambiguity, Metaphors | No Comments »

Music, Essential Metaphor, And Private Language

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

Music, Essential Metaphor, And Private Language by Nick Zangwill, American Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 48, Number 1, January 2011.

Abstract:

Music is elusive. describing it is problematic. In particular its aesthetic properties cannot be captured in literal description. Beyond very simple terms, they cannot be literally described. In this sense, the aesthetic description of music is essentially nonliteral. An adequate aesthetic description of music must have resort to metaphor or other nonliteral devices. I maintain that this is because of the nature of the aesthetic properties being described. I defend this view against an apparently simple objection put by Malcolm Budd. dealing with this objection will take us into some surprising terrain. We are led to consider issues concerning privacy and the language for describing sensations. In the light of these considerations, I develop the essentially nonliteralist thesis and explore some of its consequences. (emphasis in original)

Zangwill’s article is a good reminder that there are very large areas of human experience that are not amenable to the “Just the facts, Ma’am” type approach. Music being one. Would you believe medicine is another? Zangwill says:

It might seem strange to hold that there is part of reality that cannot be literally described. Is that not an obscure and mystical view? If aesthetic properties are there in the world, surely we should be able to describe them in literal terms, at least in principle. But the idea of a literally indescribable reality is not unfamiliar. If we want to describe tastes, smells, and inner sensations, we will, beyond very simple descriptions, be forced to describe them nonliterally. Indeed, part of the training of doctors is to elicit and interpret metaphorical descriptions of pain, with a view to diagnosis. Nonliteral description is inescapable and irreplaceable in such cases. The same is true in the description of music.

I would add physical sensations, relationships with others, our experiencing of events, etc.

The interesting bits of our lives aren’t describable other than by metaphor.

If you think about it, literal descriptions offer an impoverished view on the world.

One that excludes what is unique to us, our metaphors.

PS: You may also enjoy other papers at Nick Zangwill’s homepage, particularly the one on Negative Properties.

Posted in Metaphors, Topic Maps | 1 Comment »

Measuring the meaning of words in contexts:…

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Measuring the meaning of words in contexts: An automated analysis of controversies about ‘Monarch butterflies,’ ‘Frankenfoods,’ and ‘stem cells’ Author(s): Loet Leydesdorff and Iina Hellsten Keywords: co-words, metaphors, diaphors, context, meaning

Abstract:

Co-words have been considered as carriers of meaning across different domains in studies of science, technology, and society. Words and co-words, however, obtain meaning in sentences, and sentences obtain meaning in their contexts of use. At the science/society interface, words can be expected to have different meanings: the codes of communication that provide meaning to words differ on the varying sides of the interface. Furthermore, meanings and interfaces may change over time. Given this structuring of meaning across interfaces and over time, we distinguish between metaphors and diaphors as reflexive mechanisms that facilitate the translation between contexts. Our empirical focus is on three recent scientific controversies: Monarch butterflies, Frankenfoods, and stem-cell therapies. This study explores new avenues that relate the study of co-word analysis in context with the sociological quest for the analysis and processing of meaning.

Excellent article on shifts of word meaning over time. Reports sufficient detail on methodology that interested readers will be able to duplicate or extend the research reported here.

Questions:

  1. Annotated bibliography of research citing this paper.
  2. Design a study of the shifting meaning of a 2 or 3 terms. What texts would you select? (3-5 pages, with citations)
  3. Perform a study of shifting meaning of terms in library science. (Project)

Posted in Ambiguity, Co-Words, Collocation, Diaphors, Metaphors, Semantics | No Comments »