arXiv:2604.08275cs.CL2026-04中稿 · CMCL@LREC2026

对比近义动词短语的隐喻与字面用法,发现差异因结构而异。

Floating or Suggesting Ideas? A Large-Scale Contrastive Analysis of Metaphorical and Literal Verb-Object Constructions

  • 分析297组动词+宾语搭配在200万句中的使用特征。
  • 隐喻用法情感负荷更高,字面用法更常见且结构更规整。
  • 不同搭配内部差异大,无统一规律可循,适合语言学研究者。

隐喻广泛存在于日常语言中,使人们能通过具体领域表达抽象概念。尽管已有研究从认知和心理语言学角度探讨隐喻,但针对近义表达的隐喻与字面用法的大规模对比仍有限。本研究分析了297个英语动词-宾语搭配(如'float idea' vs 'suggest idea')在约200万语料句中的上下文使用情况。利用五种NLP工具提取了2,293个涵盖情感、词汇、句法及语篇层面的特征。研究回答两个问题:(i) 隐喻与字面语境中的特征是否不同(跨对分析);(ii) 单一对搭配内部是否存在差异(对内分析)。跨对结果表明,字面语境具有更高的词汇频率、连贯性与结构规整性,而隐喻语境则表现出更强的情感负荷、意象性、词汇多样性与构式特异性。对内分析显示显著异质性,多数搭配内部效应不一致。结果表明,不存在统一的分布模式来区分隐喻与字面用法,差异主要取决于具体构式。整体而言,大规模数据结合多样化特征,提供了对动词-宾语搭配中隐喻-字面差异的细粒度理解。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Metaphor pervades everyday language, allowing speakers to express abstract concepts via concrete domains. While prior work has studied metaphors cognitively and psycholinguistically, large-scale comparisons with literal language remain limited, especially for near-synonymous expressions. We analyze 297 English verb-object pairs (e.g., float idea vs. suggest idea) in ~2M corpus sentences, examining their contextual usage. Using five NLP tools, we extract 2,293 cognitive and linguistic features capturing affective, lexical, syntactic, and discourse-level properties. We address: (i) whether features differ between metaphorical and literal contexts (cross-pair analysis), and (ii) whether individual VO pairs diverge internally (within-pair analysis). Cross-pair results show literal contexts have higher lexical frequency, cohesion, and structural regularity, while metaphorical contexts show greater affective load, imageability, lexical diversity, and constructional specificity. Within-pair analyses reveal substantial heterogeneity, with most pairs showing non-uniform effects. These results suggest no single, consistent distributional pattern that distinguishes metaphorical from literal usage. Instead, differences are largely construction-specific. Overall, large-scale data combined with diverse features provides a fine-grained understanding of metaphor-literal contrasts in VO usage.

隐喻分析语义对比自然语言处理

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