There are some examples.
(7) The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. (Tomas Jefferson)
(8) Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
(9) His reply was smooth.
In (7) the vehicle, ‘liberty’, refers to an abstractive concept, which the tenor, ‘tree’ is a material object, and the ground implies that liberty cannot be achieved or defeated without the shading of the blood of both the defenders and oppressors of the liberty in a violent struggle. On the other hand, blood (manure) nurtures liberty. Words in example (8) as ‘tasted’, ‘swallowed’, ‘chewed’, ‘digested’ literally means different ways of eating foods, which are the vehicle, and the tenor is ‘reading books’, so obviously the ground is the condition that books could be read in various ways as foods could be eaten in different method. ‘smooth’ in example (9) means have an even surface without points, lumps, pump; not rough; which is the vehicle, and the tenor is ‘reply’. So the ground is that her reply is tactful and shrewd just as the same satisfactory character or condition of smooth.
From syntactic view, the application of metaphor is always flexible and multiple, for in the sentence structure, the vehicle may be implied in the subject, the predicate, the object, the predicative, the attribute or the adverbial modifier; What’s more, the vehicle can be a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or even a paragraph. However, three basic structure patterns are commonly used in English metaphor.
Pattern I: the tenor and the vehicle are connected by the words such as: be, become, turn into, ect., and the vehicle mostly acts as the predicative.
(10) Jane’s Uncle is an old fox, up to all kinds of evils.
(11) Hollywood, California, was the film capital, a magnet for the talented, the greedy, the beautiful, the hopeful and the weird.
(12) After that long talk, Jim became the sun in her heart.
In example (10)(11)(12), the tenors are respectively ‘Jane’s Uncle’, ‘Holly wood’, ‘Jim’, the vehicle, ‘an old fox’, ‘a magnet’, ‘the sun’, which are the predicative in the sentences. This pattern is the most basic type.
Pattern II: the preposition ‘of’ is used to connect the tenor and the vehicle, indicating the appositive relationship, such as,
(13) Mirage is the bloom or blight of all men’s happiness.
(14) But in a country where rice farmers have spent nearly 50 years in a comfortable cocoon of government protection.
In the example (14)(15) the metaphor is in a phrase consisting of the tenors and the vehicle and the preposition ‘of’. On the other hand, the vehicle and the tenor are the appositive, that is, ‘happiness is the bloom or blight; government protection is a comfortable cocoon’.
Patten III: verbs and adjectives are applied to transfer the metaphor, that is, words used to describe the special quality of one thing are adopted to describe the other thing to which the special quality are transferred. There are still many cases in this pattern.
(15) From the burning look in his eye, I knew he was angry with me.
(16) Toby’s fears had evaporated.
The word ‘burning’ actually is used to describe the state of the fire, while in example (15) it is transfer to describe ‘look’. Reader could immediately experience such situation. ‘evaporate’ is a Verb which expresses the particular quality of the gas, while it is used in the case (16), the abstractive concept ‘f
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