Ontology Oriented Computation of English Verbs Metaphorical Trait

Research on metaphor has generally focused on exploring its context-dependent behavior and function. This current study aims to testify the postulate of English verb's innate trait of Metaphor Making potential. This paper intends to carry out an in-depth case study of a group of English core verbs using WordNet and SUMO ontology. In order to operationalize the assessment of an English verb’s metaphor making potential, a refined algorithm has been developed, and a program made to realize the computation. At last, it is observed that higher frequency verbs generally possess greater metaphor making potential; while a verb’s metaphor making potential on the other hand is also strongly influenced by its functional categories. As a preliminary context-free experiment with metaphor, this research foresees the possibility of providing an annotation schema for critical discourse analysis and a new parameter for scaling the difficulty level of reading comprehension of English texts.