Computational Mechanisms for Metaphor in Languages: A Survey

Metaphor computation has attracted more and moreattention because metaphor, to some extent, is the focus of mind andlanguage mechanism. However, it encounters problems not only due to therich expressive power of natural language but also due to cognitivenature of human being. Therefore machine-understanding of metaphor isnow becoming a bottle-neck in natural language processing and machinetranslation. This paper first suggests how a metaphor is understood andthen presents a survey of current computational approaches, in terms oftheir linguistic historical roots, underlying foundations, methods andtechniques currently used, advantages, limitations, and future trends.A comparison between metaphors in English and Chinese languages is alsointroduced because compared with development in English languageChinese metaphor computation is just at its starting stage. So aseparate summarization of current progress made in Chinese metaphorcomputation is presented. As a conclusion, a few suggestions areproposed for further research on metaphor computation especially on Chinesemetaphor computation.