A corpus-based study of grammatical post-metaphorical expressions

Abstract In Systemic Functional Linguistics, meanings in semantic stratum could be realized by congruent/premetaphorical, metaphorical, or demetaphorical/post-metaphorical expressions lexico-grammatical stratum. This paper, evidenced from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), explores specific pathway metaphorical to post-metaphorical ones guided principles Context-first and AS IF principle double functionality. The findings show that grammatical postmetaphorization is mainly post-metaphor ideation modality. former finds its common nouns proper (e.g. security Security ), uncountable countable securities latter shifting explicit objective orientation subjective counterpart it possible might modal probability I think type clausal initial position medial final clause).