We show that it is possible to reliably discriminate whether a syntactic construction is meant literally or metaphorically using lexical semantic features of the words that participate in the construction. Our model is constructed using English resources, and we obtain state-of-the-art performance relative to previous work in this language. Using a model transfer approach by pivoting through a bilingual dictionary, we show our model can identify metaphoric expressions in other languages. We provide results on three new test sets in Spanish, Farsi, and Russian. The results support the hypothesis that metaphors are conceptual, rather than lexical, in nature.
The supervised approach of REF , for instance, can quite reliably "discriminate whether a syntactic construction is meant literally or metaphorically" but is very specific, focused on subject-verb-object and adjective-noun phrases.
Metaphor Detection with Cross-Lingual Model Transfer
ACL
Computer Science