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A Metaphor Comprehension Method Based on Culture-Related Hierarchical Semantic Model

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Abstract

Usually a metaphor is encoded with rich cultural connotation, which signifies that culture plays a key factor in truly comprehending a metaphorically-used utterance. Given that, we developed a culture-related hierarchical semantic model to perform metaphor comprehension. Based on the character of a metaphor, to better represent context and background knowledge, we embedded word-level, attribute-level, perception-level, and context-level information into the model. Moreover, in the attribute-level, a culture mapping is developed to better use cultural information. We use a random walk algorithm to search for the most reasonable comprehension results. The model was tested in a nominal Chinese metaphor corpus. The results show the effectiveness of the model and demonstrate its advantages in understanding cultural metaphors.

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Notes

  1. An English dictionary containing lexical relationships, https://wordnet.princeton.edu/.

  2. A Chinese Thesaurus, http://ir.hit.edu.cn/.

  3. A context attribute query system produced by Creative Language Systems Group.http://afflatus.ucd.ie/lexeco/index.jsp.

  4. A Chinese corpus. http://www.duzhe.com.

  5. A word segmentation tool of NLP Lab of Xiamen University.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project 61075058). And we would like to thank Mr. Michael McAllister and Mr. Junchao Li for their valuable assistance in proofreading this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Informatics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, Fujian, China

    Chang Su, Ying Peng, Shuman Huang & Yijiang Chen

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  1. Chang Su
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  2. Ying Peng
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  3. Shuman Huang
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  4. Yijiang Chen
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Correspondence to Yijiang Chen.

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Appendices

A A Part of the Attribute Database. The Attributes with * Are Cultural Attributes

B Examples of Metaphor Comprehension Results. The Target and Source Are in Bold. The Cultural Target and Source Are in Italics.

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Su, C., Peng, Y., Huang, S. et al. A Metaphor Comprehension Method Based on Culture-Related Hierarchical Semantic Model. Neural Process Lett 51, 2807–2826 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11063-020-10227-6

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