Types of transfer in ideational metaphor: a corpus-based study

Ideational metaphor in the Hallidayan sense comprises experiential metaphor and logical metaphor. Experiential metaphor arises from the semogenic rank-shift and logical metaphor from the semogenic transcategorization. This article conducted a corpus-based diachronic study to identify types of transfer in ideational metaphor. Our findings show that the transfer from verbal groups to countable nouns and finally to adjectives does not necessarily go through all the in-between stages. Five types of semogenic transfer were identified in ideational metaphor: nominalisation of verbal groups, gerundalization of verbal groups, adjectivalization of participles, adjectivalization of nominal groups and verbalization of conjunction groups. These five types of transfer can be generalised as three resources for creating ideational metaphor: nominalisation, adjectivalization and verbalization, all involving semogenic rank-shift. We also found two other types of transfer: mass noun to countable noun and verbal gerund to present participle. Neither transfer creates ideational metaphor because no semogenic rank-shift is involved. The former is transcategorization from living metaphor to dead metaphor, and the latter is transcategorization at the word rank.