An approach to sense extension tailored for polysemy associated with non-literal language expanded to include belief revision generally. The relationship between metaphor and genericity as rhetorical devices is discussed, and both are accounted for as related species within the same framework of dynamic semantics. The theoretical apparatus is related to a dominant theory of metaphor interpretat...

A detailed approach has been developed for core aspects of the task of understanding a broad class of metaphorical utterances. The utterances in question are those that depend on known metaphorical mappings but that nevertheless contain elements not mapped by those mappings. A reasoning system has been implemented that partially instantiates the theoretical approach. The system, called ATT-Meta...

This paper describes an experiment to explore the effects of the TENCompetence infrastructure for supporting lifelong competence development which is now in development. This infrastructure provides structured, multi-leveled access to learning materials, based upon competences. People can follow their own learning path, supported by a listing of competences and their components, by competence d...

Within the TENCompetence project we aim to develop and integrate models and tools into an open source infrastructure for the creation, storage and exchange of learning objects, suitable knowledge resources as well as learning experiences. This contribution analyzes the potential of social software tools for providing part of the required functionality, as well as some challenges involved.

There is a tendency to think of World Englishes in the noun form; as products rather than as processes (implying that one receives both ready-made, controlling the development of neither). Conceptualising World Englishes as processes in which one can participate as an agent raises the question of what skills are needed in their active construction. The author will argue that since culture resid...

Automatic processing of metaphor can be clearly divided into two subtasks: metaphor recognition (distinguishing between literal and metaphorical language in a text) and metaphor interpretation (identifying the intended literal meaning of a metaphorical expression). Both of them have been repeatedly addressed in NLP. This paper is the first comprehensive and systematic review of the existing com...

We present a novel approach to metaphor interpretation and a system that produces literal paraphrases for metaphorical expressions. Such a representation is directly transferable to other applications that can benefit from a metaphor processing component. Our method is distinguished from the previous work in that it does not rely on any hand-crafted knowledge about metaphor, but in contrast emp...

The study of concepts in psychology has historically had little to say about the possible influence of metaphor on mental representation. This silence is not terribly surprising given the long-standing view that metaphor is an ornamental, even deviant, form of language bearing no relation to how people actually conceptualize of objects, individuals, events, and abstract ideas. But in the last 2...

According to contemporary theories of cognition, the process of metaphorical interpretation is conceived of as a 'mapping' from a source domain to a target domain. The author of this paper believes, in contrast, that this process of mapping does not take place in a vacuum, but rather is influenced by both agentive and contextual factors. By the agentive factors of metaphorical cognition, she re...

Research suggests that gestures influence cognitive processes, but the exact mechanism is not clear. Additionally, it has been shown that when a linguistic task (metaphor explanation) involves the right brain hemisphere, the left hand becomes more gesturally active. We hypothesized that gestures with a particular hand activate cognitive processes in the contralateral hemisphere. We examined whe...