The syntax of metaphor

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyses diachronic changes which result from metaphorical extension. Its aim is to assess whether such semantic shifts may lead to further semantic and syntactic differentiation between the verb senses and whether they can be described as shifts away or towards prototypical transitivity (cf. Hopper & Thompson 1980). It focusses on changes the verb derail underwent in the 19th and 20th centuries. In a corpus-based analysis, it utilises CART trees and a random forest to determine which syntactic and semantic properties differentiate literal and metaphorical uses of derail. Results reveal a syntactic shift from transitive to intransitive in the older literal construction which hardly affects the younger metaphorical one. This indicates that differentiation can be an epiphenomenon of semantic shifts.