A contrastive study of similes in English and Norwegian : A corpus-based analysis of features of the English similes like a/an + noun and as + adjective + as+ noun and their most frequent translation correspondences in the Norwegian language

Within the framework of the present study, simile, which is a special kind of metaphor, is investigated both on the syntactic and conceptual levels. The starting point of the research are two English simile frames: "like a/an [noun]" and "as [adjective] as [noun]" which are first of all established as most frequent mutual translation correspondences with the Norwegian "som en/ei/et [noun]" and "like [adjective] som [noun]". These four structures are then further investigated in terms of vehicles they operate with: noun vehicles in all four similes and adjective vehicles in the "as [adjective]as[noun]" and "like [adjective] som [noun]". According to the modern theory of metaphor, developed by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980, conceptual domains (or vehicles, as they are referred to in this study) are tethered to personal or cultural experiences, and therefore are different on individual and cultural level. However, in the course of this study a lot of similarity is being observed between conceptual domains (vehicles) in English and Norwegian similes which were analyzed by grouping them into categories of generic meaning. As the analysis showed, the two sets of similes in English and Norwegian most frequently operate with the same groups of noun vehicles (“nature”, “human”, “man-made objects”). The "as [adjective] as [noun]" and "like [adjective] som [noun]" similes are also found to operate most frequently with the same types of adjectives denoting evaluation, color and size. The results of the study can be of practical significance to the developers of machine translation software, researchers in the field of phraseology, translation, contrastive studies and cross-cultural communication and development of corpora