ABSTRACT
Aristotle at least tried to concentrate on formal aspects: 'Metaphor is the application of a strange term either transferred from the genus and applied to the species, or from the species and applied to the genus, or from one species to another, or by analogy'. Moreover, most writers on metaphor share three implicit assumptions about language. This chapter shows that any theory of natural languages which does not take metaphor into account will be inadequate to explain how such languages function. It provides the outline of a view of language within which an adequate linguistic theory of metaphor might be developed. Some of the leading generative theoreticians seem, from their original fields of study and/or current predilections, to be oriented more in the direction of logic than of practical linguistics. There has been no specifically linguistic treatment of metaphor, which, despite the recognised importance of its role in changes of meaning, has been regarded as somehow marginal in synchronic studies.
