This article addresses two forms of artful language: similes and metaphors. It argues that their artful quality arises from a deliberate omission of information, requiring the listener to fill in the missing parts. Sentences of the form ‘A is like B’ have two uses: as plain comparisons (called similatives) stating that two individuals (item A and item B) are comparable and share properties, and as similes, which are intended as assertions that A is “B-like” in some way. The simile’s absent information is tacit assumptions about its second member, B. As a result, similatives and similes behave differently and have distinct syntactic interpretations. The absent information in a metaphor of the form ‘A is a B’ is a tacit analogy, A:X::B:Y. As such, a metaphor asserts a parallel between two unstated relations, not its two identified items. The tacit members X and Y create the structural framework for the metaphor. Because metaphors use different tacit information than similes do, the two forms require distinct interpretations. It is also shown here that the literal truth of similes and metaphors is irrelevant to their interpretations. Nevertheless, artful statements can be used to make true or false assertions. Their truth is determined by taking their absent information into account. Furthermore, similes and metaphors can meaningfully use negation, as plain statements can. Patterns in simile and metaphor usage reveal that there are predictable processes behind their creation and systematic methods to their interpretations. Once these are identified, the linguistic contributions of similes and metaphors become clear.

本文介绍了两种巧妙的语言形式：明喻和隐喻。它认为，他们巧妙的素质源于故意遗漏信息，要求听众填写缺失的部分。形式“ A像B ”的句子有两个用途：作为简单比较（称为模拟），声明两个个体（项目A和项目B）是可比较的并且共享属性；并且作为比喻，旨在作为断言A是以某种方式“类似B ”。该明喻的缺席信息是关于其第二个成员B的默认假设。结果，模拟词和比喻的行为有所不同，并且具有独特的句法解释。隐喻形式为“ A is B ”的缺席信息是默示类比，即A：X：B：Y。这样，隐喻断言两个未陈述的关系（而不是它的两个已标识的项目）之间是平行的。默认成员X和Y创建隐喻的结构框架。因为隐喻使用的隐性信息与明喻使用的隐性信息不同，所以两种形式都需要不同的解释。这里还表明，明喻和隐喻的字面事实与它们的解释无关。然而，巧妙的陈述可用于做出正确或错误的断言。通过考虑他们的缺席信息来确定他们的真实性。而且，明喻和隐喻可以像否定的陈述一样有意义地使用否定。明喻和隐喻用法的模式表明，在它们的创造和解释它们的系统方法之后，存在可预见的过程。一旦确定了这些，明喻和隐喻的语言贡献就变得清晰起来。