Modeling connections between linguistic constructions and conceptual metaphors

In cognitive studies on metaphor, the elements and relations responsible for the linguistic instantiations of conceptual metaphors are investigated on the conceptual level of crossdomain mappings. Though the cognitive approach devises strategies to model the inference patterns necessary to understand metaphorical constructions, it has not devised machinery to model the links between metaphorical linguistic constructions and conceptual metaphors. This paper, thus, aims at unveiling such links and rests on the following assumptions: (i) linguistic constructions are understood in terms of conceptual entities, (ii) concepts are grouped in conceptual domains, and (iii) conceptual domains are structured internally in terms of image-schematic structures and semantic frames. By moving from linguistic constructions to conceptual structures, this study demonstrates that languagespecific and cross-linguistic generalizations underlying the links between linguistic constructions and conceptual metaphors are feasible by merging four different representation schemas: semantic fields, semantic frames, conceptual domains, and image schemas, for each of these schemas factors out the task of specifying the linguistic, conceptual, and perceptual elements, and the relations between them, which are, in turn, responsible for the linguistic instantiations of the corresponding conceptual metaphors.