The Study On The Logical Forms Of Metaphorical Sentences

The study of metaphor has a long history.In ancient times,the study of metaphor focused on its rhetorical techniques,while in modern times,the study of metaphor emphasizes its cognitive function.The reason for this shift is that with the rise and development of analytical philosophy,philosophers increasingly focus on the study of language,shifting the study of metaphor from the literary field to the philosophical field.Searle,Davidson,and Lakoff respectively started from the working mechanism of metaphor,the creativity of metaphor,and the conceptual construction function of metaphor to study metaphor,deepening people’s understanding of the cognitive function of metaphor and providing theoretical support for metaphorical logic.The core of formalizing metaphorical sentences is to formalize the truth conditions of metaphorical sentences.The truth condition of a metaphorical sentence is the truth condition of the metaphorical meaning,and the metaphorical meaning is the idea expressed by the metaphorical sentence,which is opposite to and derived from the literal meaning.If only from the semantic level,the truth condition of a metaphorical sentence is the condition that the thought expressed by the metaphorical meaning is true,which can be called the semantic truth condition of the metaphorical sentence.There are two main ways to formalize the semantic truth conditions of metaphorical sentences.One is to start with the structure of the metaphor and achieve the formal expression of the semantic truth conditions of metaphorical sentences by depicting the mapping relationship between the source domain and the target domain;The other is to start with the semantic structure of metaphorical sentences,and achieve the formal expression of the semantic truth conditions of metaphorical sentences through the logical expression of each component of the metaphorical sentence.The metaphorical structure theory and the metaphorical category theory are representative schemes of these two paths.The logical tools used in the theory of metaphorical structure are mainly possible world semantics and analogical reasoning.The logical tools used in metaphor category theory are mainly category grammar,standard typology,and higher order logic based on lambda calculus.In the process of understanding metaphorical sentences,contextual factors must be considered,while the semantic truth conditions of metaphorical sentences do not consider contextual factors.Therefore,the precise logical description of metaphorical sentences must be combined with contextual formal analysis of the understanding process of metaphorical sentences.Understanding metaphorical sentences requires determining whether they are metaphorical sentences,extracting possible metaphorical meanings,and screening out metaphorical meanings that conflict with context.The process of understanding metaphorical truth conditions can be formalized by introducing contextual adaptation functions,dynamic cognitive logic,fuzzy logic,and retrospective reasoning.The context adaptation function can be used to determine whether a sentence is a metaphorical sentence,and to filter possible metaphorical meanings based on the sentence.Dynamic cognitive logic can construct logical models of metaphorical cognition,depict dynamic contexts,and improve contextual parameters in context adaptation functions.Fuzzy logic can determine whether a sentence is a metaphorical sentence by calculating the degree of membership of the dimension between the source domain and the target domain empirical completion.Retrospective inference can infer metaphorical meanings based on the speaker’s intention to screen out possible metaphorical meanings that conflict with the speaker’s intention.