The paper deals with the question whether representations of verb semantics formulated on the basis of a lexically and syntactically restricted domain (weather forecasts) can apply to other, less restricted textual domains. An analysis of a group of Polish polysemous verbs of motion, existence and appearance inspired by cognitive semantics, especially the metaphor theory, is presented, and the usefulness of the conceptual representations of the Polish motion/appearance/existence verbs for automatic translation of texts belonging to less restricted domains is evaluated and discussed.