This study focuses on similes, a category of phraseological units that has been amply studied in the phraseology literature but suffers froma lack of corpus-based description. The concept of simile is defined and the differences between similes and comparisons, on the one hand, and similes and metaphors, on the other, are described in some detail with reference to the literature. Then four simile patterns are extracted from the British National Corpus: as Adj/Adv as, is like a(n), is like V-ing a(n) and V like a(n). The selection procedure consists in sifting out literal comparisons using the reversibility test and the degree of figurativeness. This process highlights interesting differences between the patterns in terms of frequency, lexicalization and register. The as Adj/Adv as-pattern is the most frequent but the vast majority of the instances represent literal comparisons. The few per cent similes tend to be lexicalized and there is little innovation. By contrast, the is like a(n)-sequences are much less common but regularly figurative and innovative. The V like a(n)-pattern also proves to contain a high proportion of similes, both lexicalized and innovative.
Mizin, Kostiantyn, Viktor Kotsur, Liubov Letiucha & Alina Saik
2024. Верифікація результатів спрямованого асоціативного експерименту (обмеження реакцій порівняльним сполучником as … as) на основі даних англійськомовного веб-корпусу iWeb. PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 35:2 ► pp. 108 ff.
Peppard, Jason
2023. BE Like Simile Usage Across Genres in the COCA. Corpus Pragmatics 7:2 ► pp. 59 ff.
Mukenge, Clemenciana & Advice Chimbarange
2022. An Exploration of Metaphoric Images in Oliver Mtukudzi’s Songs on HIV/AIDS. In The Cultural and Artistic Legacy of Oliver Mtukudzi, ► pp. 93 ff.
Buljan, Gabrijela & Lea Maras
2021. “Shall I (compare) compare thee?”. Yearbook of Phraseology 12:1 ► pp. 75 ff.
Dalpanagioti, Thomai
2018. A Frame-semantic Approach to Co-occurrence Patterns: A Lexicographic Study of English and Greek Motion Verbs. International Journal of Lexicography
Parizoska, Jelena & Ivana Filipović Petrović
2017. Variation of Adjectival Slots in kao (‘as’) Similes in Croatian: A Cognitive Linguistic Account. In Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 10596], ► pp. 348 ff.
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