ABSTRACT
Pointing to the general provisions in language for the productivity and intelligibility of ordinary metaphor, Michael C. Haley argues that generative grammar represents a powerful theoretical instrument for the study of poetic metaphor. He proceeds to posit a broad topography of semantic categories as a hierarchy of predicative classes. Long after the generative grammars have been replaced by other linguistic models, they will perhaps be remembered as the first systematic effort, at least in modern American linguistics, to account for the infinite creativity of human language. It seems natural that generative grammar should lead linguists into the study of poetic metaphor, for this is possibly the most creative use to which human language can be put. The universalized liberty has been brought home by the particularity of a bird; the lack of confinement has arisen from the sea; and the quality of unlimited restraint has issued from the expanded prison of a poet's mind.
