Abstract The semantic similarity that characterizes two terms aligned in a metaphor is here analysed through a corpus-based distributional semantic space. We compare and contrast two samples of metaphors, representative of visual and linguistic modality of expressions respectively. Popular theories of metaphor claim that metaphors transcend their modality to influence conceptual structures, thus suggesting that different modalities of expression would typically express the same conceptual metaphors. However, we show substantial differences in the degree of similarity captured by the distributional semantic space with regard to the modality of expression (higher similarity for linguistic metaphors than for visual ones). We argue that this is due to two possible variables: Conventionality (linguistic metaphors are typically conventional, while visual are not) and Complexity (visual metaphors have modality-specific inner complexities that penalize the degree of similarity between metaphor terms captured by a language-based model). Finally, we compare the similarity scores of our original formulations with those obtained from different possible verbalizations of the same metaphors (acquired by replacing the metaphor terms with their semantic neighbours). We show that while this operation does not affect the average similarity between metaphor terms for visual metaphors, the similarity changes significantly in linguistic metaphors. These results are discussed here.

中文翻译：

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相似就是接近：使用分布语义空间在视觉和语言隐喻中模拟相似性

摘要本文通过基于语料库的分布语义空间来分析表征在隐喻中对齐的两个术语的语义相似性。我们比较和对比了两个隐喻样本，分别代表了视觉和语言表达方式。流行的隐喻理论认为，隐喻超越其形式而影响概念结构，因此表明不同的表达方式通常会表达相同的概念隐喻。但是，在表达方式方面，我们发现分布语义空间所捕获的相似度存在实质性差异（语言隐喻的相似度高于视觉隐喻的相似度）。我们认为这是由于两个可能的变量引起的：惯例（语言隐喻通常是惯例，视觉隐喻则不是）和复杂度（视觉隐喻具有特定于形式的内部复杂度，这会惩罚基于语言的模型所捕获的隐喻项之间的相似度）。最后，我们将原始表述的相似性得分与从相同隐喻的不同可能言语获得的相似性得分进行比较（通过用其语义邻居替换隐喻术语而获得）。我们表明，尽管该操作不会影响视觉隐喻的隐喻术语之间的平均相似度，但在语言隐喻中相似度却发生了显着变化。这些结果在这里讨论。我们将原始表述的相似性得分与从相同隐喻的不同可能言语获得的相似性得分进行比较（通过用其语义邻居替换隐喻术语而获得）。我们表明，尽管该操作不会影响视觉隐喻的隐喻术语之间的平均相似度，但在语言隐喻中相似度却发生了显着变化。这些结果在这里讨论。我们将原始表述的相似性得分与从相同隐喻的不同可能言语获得的相似性得分进行比较（通过用其语义邻居替换隐喻术语而获得）。我们表明，尽管该操作不会影响视觉隐喻的隐喻术语之间的平均相似度，但在语言隐喻中相似度却发生了显着变化。这些结果在这里讨论。