@inproceedings{dipper-2025-metaphorical,
    title = "Metaphorical Heads and Literal Dependents: Syntactic Properties of Metaphors in {G}erman",
    author = "Dipper, Stefanie",
    editor = {Jablotschkin, Sarah  and
      K{\"u}bler, Sandra  and
      Zinsmeister, Heike},
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 23rd International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT, SyntaxFest 2025)",
    month = aug,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Ljubljana, Slovenia",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-08/2025.tlt-1.10/",
    pages = "81--90",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-291-6",
    abstract = "In this paper we examine the way metaphors are expressed in language. Our starting hypothesis is that the two expressions that are central to metaphor {--} namely the metaphorical expression and the expression that represents the target of the metaphorical transfer {--} typically stand in a syntactic dependency relation: metaphorical heads govern literal dependents. An analysis of German sermons with 30k words confirms that the hypothesis applies in 67{\%} of the cases. 10{\%} show the reverse relationship and in 23{\%} there is a common ancestor."
}