Noun metaphors. The difference between noun metaphors and non-noun metaphors

Metaphor- is a trope which draws an imaginative identification of one concept- T with another concept-V with the resultant breach of normal correspondence btw concepts and words.

T- explicit or implicit; V-explicit

M. can be embodied in all the basic parts of speech, in nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, noun metaphors being the most complicated for analysis.

Types of identification:

(1) T is linked with V by a copula (T is V).

(2) (i) "I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. (Sandburg)

(3) (ii) Take away love and our earth is a tomb. (Browning)

(2) T is linked with T by the verb of transformation (T turns into V). Sometimes a third element is involved (C makes T into V).

(ii)...A flush of pleasure turned Mary's face into a har­vest moon. (Huxley)

(4) The pointing replacement. T is mentioned and then replaced by V (T that V) or vice versa (V...T) Men of England, Heirs of Glory – без that. There’re also other methods of pointing: by apposition or with the vocative

(a) With the determinative —

(i) A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings. (Eliot)

(ii) Could I come near your beauty with my nails

I could set my ten commandments in your face.

(Shakespeare)

These are words of an infuriated woman addressed to another woman she hates. The tenor (my nails) is replaced by the vehicle "my ten commandments". Ten Commandments, in the Bible, are the cardinal summary of law, presented as given by God to Moses. They are a reflection of the ethical system of the ancient Jews: not to profane the name of the Lord; to keep the Sabbath day; not to kill; not to give way to lust, etc. Observe the complex amount of information encoded in this metaphor.

(b) By apposition —

(i) When he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still.

(Shakespeare)

Sometimes the position of tenor and vehicle is reversed: first comes the vehicle and then, in apposition to it, the tenor:

(ii) Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this
flower, safety. (Shakespeare)

(с) With the vocative —

(i) Men of England, Heirs of Glory! (Shelley)

(5) V has an attribute from which we can guess T.

(i) Oh, Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun. (Blake)

Here "the steps of the sun" are hours or minutes.

(ii) The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. (Shakespeare)

V is a part of, or derives from, or belongs to or is attributed by C, from which relation we can guess T. The attribute is expressed by an of-phrase or other preposit. phrases as well as by an adj.