Abstract This paper offers a systematic, bottom-up, investigation of the role of adjectives as metaphor signals in metaphorical domain constructions (MDCs) such as ‘budgetary anorexia’ and ‘economic crash’ within the framework of Deliberate Metaphor Theory (e.g., Steen, 2017). To this end, we analyse all MDCs in the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus. Results of our analyses demonstrate that domain adjectives in MDCs do not by definition constitute signals of metaphor, and that not all nouns in MDCs are identified as potentially deliberate metaphors. We identify three different functions of domain adjectives: (1) signal of novel metaphor; (2) signal of conventional metaphor; (3) non-signal. The analyses in this paper provide new insights into both the role of domain adjectives in MDCs, and the position of MDCs as a typical manifestation of potentially deliberate metaphor.

中文翻译：

---

关于隐喻的观点、炸药和涂鸦

摘要 本文在刻意隐喻理论（例如，Steen， 2017）。为此，我们分析了 VU 阿姆斯特丹隐喻语料库中的所有 MDC。我们的分析结果表明，根据定义，MDC 中的领域形容词并不构成隐喻的信号，并且并非 MDC 中的所有名词都被识别为潜在的故意隐喻。我们确定了领域形容词的三种不同功能：（1）新隐喻的信号；(2) 惯用隐喻的信号；(3) 无信号。