Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian

The aim of this article is to present some insights and reflections as a result of the application of the MIPVU procedure for metaphor identification in Lithuanian and discuss several methodological issues. Firstly, the paper presents the background to the methodology and illustrates its application to Lithuanian. Secondly, the article discusses some difficulties in applying this method to Lithuanian in annotating words as (non)metaphorical. Namely, problematic issues include the following: identification of metaphorical meaning motivated by grammatical cases; demarcation of lexical units, establishing contextual and basic meanings of words based on their definitions provided in available dictionaries of (contemporary) Lithuanian, and the fuzzy boundaries between homonymy and polysemy. As a conclusion, some tentative suggestions are provided regarding more effective application of the MIPVU tool to the analysis of Lithuanian.


Introduction
After the introduction of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (hereafter, CMT) in the 1980s, a number of studies have been carried out applying its key principles.The now-traditional yet then groundbreaking idea that metaphor functions not merely at the level of language but rather is a tool of thought motivated researchers to perform analyses revealing conceptual metaphorical patterns in numerous discourses and in different languages.Although not entirely new and purely autonomous, the revolutionary move from the view that metaphor is a matter of language to the one arguing that it is primarily a matter of thought was established with the publication of the seminal book Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff andJohnson 1980/2003).Despite the overwhelming popularity of the theory and the numerous studies conducted in the CMT framework, some researchers started expressing methodological concerns related to the cognitive account of metaphor (see Steen et al. 2010aSteen et al. , 2010b;;Deignan 2010: 55-56;Gibbs 2007: 7, Gibbs 2011: 533-537;Low and Todd 2010: 217-229;Dobrovol'skij and Piirainen 2005: 123-144).Considerable criticism has been expressed regarding the fact that much of the linguistic data that Lakoff and Johnson draw on were not examples of naturally occurring discourse.The focus on the conceptual aspects of metaphor functioning frequently resulted in numerous studies where there were no explicit procedures of the collection of linguistic data and metaphor identification in texts.In other words, in many cases the shift to the conceptual level of metaphor resulted in considerably less attention to the surface level of metaphor manifestation, i.e. language.In Cameron's words, the "emphasis on cognitive aspects has [...] led to unwarranted lack of interest in the language1 of metaphor" (Cameron 1999: 11).
Despite the fact that language is perhaps one of the easiest media to identify metaphor in, by no means is the identification of metaphor in language an easy or simple procedure.The complexity of metaphor identification derives from several factors.Firstly, it is problematic because of the diversity of metaphor manifestation in language, i.e. one can find very creative and novel metaphorical expressions as well as extremely conventionalized words whose metaphoricity is hardly noticed.
Since metaphoricity is gradable (see Hanks 2006) and because there are very different approaches to metaphor, researchers may have different opinions when deciding what counts as a metaphor and what does not.Secondly, for a long time there have been no explicit and transparent methodologies and clearly defined guidelines of how to identify metaphor in language and, as a result, researchers tended to make individual intuition-based decisions in determining if a word or a phrase is used metaphorically in (con)text.However, even native speakers' intuitions are not valid in scientific procedures and the need for a more clearly defined methodological tool has been highlighted by numerous linguists.What counts as metaphor for one researcher may seem non-metaphorical for another and this poses significant problems as regards systematicity and transparency in deciding what may be considered as metaphor in text.As Cameron points out, " [o]perationalising metaphor for a research study requires the researcher to establish appropriate theoretical frameworks that define and categorise the phenomena of concern, and that, having constrained what is counted as evidence, further constrain how that data can be analysed" (Cameron 1999: 7).
As a reaction to the criticism towards insufficient methodological criteria in identifying what is (not) metaphorical, some methodological tools have recently been developed to identify metaphor in language using a clearly defined methodological procedure.A group of researchers under the name of the Pragglejaz Group (2007) introduced a method to identify metaphor which they called MIP (Metaphor Identification Procedure).It deals with the linguistic analysis of metaphorically used words (lexical units) in discourse.After a few years the procedure was modified and its updated version given the name of MIPVU 2 .The tool works as an instrument to identify metaphor-related words and consists of the following steps (Pragglejaz 2007: 3;Steen et al. 2010b: 5-6): 1. Read the entire text/discourse to establish a general understanding of the meaning.
2. Determine the lexical units in the text/discourse.

3.
a) For each lexical unit in the text, establish its meaning in context, i.e. how it applies to an entity, relation or attribute in the situation evoked by the text (contextual meaning).
Take into account what comes before and after the lexical unit.
b) For each lexical unit, determine if it has a more basic contemporary meaning in other contexts than the one in the given context.For our purposes, basic meanings tend to be: 4. If yes, mark the lexical unit as metaphorical.
MIP(VU) 3 is not the only methodological tool for the retrieval of metaphorically used words (the conventional way to refer to lexical units that express metaphors in the MIP(VU) framework is metaphor-related words (MRWs) (Steen et al. 2010b: 94); however, it is the only such precise method whose reliability has been formally tested to make it replicable and available to other researchers 2 "VU" stands for the university (Vrije Universiteit) in Amsterdam where the work of extending and refining the method was carried out.
3 Here I use the abbreviation MIP(VU) to refer to the main procedure of metaphor identification which in both the original and the modified versions follows the same principles.MIPVU differs from MIP in that it expands the procedure by adding more detail to the protocol which allows identification of metaphor in more forms with directly used language (such as similes, analogies, and expression of counterfactual reality).However, in this article only complexity regarding the application of the main steps of the procedure in the analysis of Lithuanian language data is addressed without delving into the differences between the two versions of the method.(Steen et al. 2010c: 166).By way of illustrating the MIP(VU) procedure in analysing Lithuanian, let us take a short sentence from an authentic text and analyse one lexical unit to determine its metaphoricity.The following sentence comes from a Lithuanian research article on criminal law: (1) Analizuojant baudžiamąsias bylas matyti, kad plėšimas dažniau yra padaromas asmenų grupės.4(T 5) 'In analysing criminal cases, it is seen [=evident] that robbery is more commonly committed by a group of people'5 .
According to the MIP(VU) guidelines, having read and established the general understanding of the text, the next step is to determine the lexical units in the text/discourse.(hereafter, DLKŽ) is 'to understand, to realise'.But the word also possesses other meanings, some of which may be considered more basic.One of the other meanings of the word matyti is, as given in the dictionary, 'to capture the sight of an object by using your eyes, to behold' (DLKŽ).Since this latter meaning is directly related to the bodily action of humans (or other animals), it gives grounds for considering the word as having a more basic meaning used in other contexts.Finally, an analyst needs to make a decision if the contextual meaning contrasts with the basic meaning and can be understood in comparison with it.The two meanings of the word matyti clearly contrast and the process of understanding can definitely be understood by comparing it to physical sight.Since the answer to the last question (if the contextual meaning contrasts with the basic meaning but can be understood by comparing it to the basic sense) is 'yes', we mark the word matyti as used metaphorically and being an instantiation of a metaphor UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING, which is Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt prominent in many different languages and cultures (see Deignan and Cameron 2009;Lakoff andJohnson 1980/2003;Sweetser 1990;Yu 2004).So this is a simple example of the practical application of the MIP(VU) procedure to Lithuanian.Clear and precise as may initially seem, the identification of metaphors in text is not always as straightforward as illustrated above.Some methodological difficulties are inevitable in the practical application of MIP(VU), which arise due to a number of reasons discussed in detail in section 3 below.
Ongoing work on the application of MIP(VU) beyond English has not been extensive yet but some researchers report on how the method works for other languages or discuss practical issues in applying MIP(VU) for languages other than English, for example Dutch (Pasma 2012), French (Reijnierse 2010), and German (Thalhammer 2010).In addition to applying MIP(VU) on different types of text and in different languages, some metaphor researchers have come up with adaptations of the tool for its more efficient application in their native languages.For example, Badryzlova and her colleagues (Badryzlova et al. 2013a(Badryzlova et al. , 2013b) ) have developed MIPVU for the annotation of metaphor in Russian.
In addition to the shallow annotation6 of linguistic metaphor, the team of Russian researchers suggest a procedure for the annotation of conceptual metaphors as well.Since this article is based on a study performed individually and not in a team of researchers annotating a text to determine its metaphoricity (which would be necessary to be able to test inter-rater reliability and ensure the method's replicability), it does not offer a protocol of an adapted MIPVU specifically for Lithuanian.
What it does is report the most challenging areas observed when testing the method in metaphor identification in Lithuanian.

Data and the procedure of testing MIP and MIPVU in Lithuanian
The testing of the procedure was carried out by identifying metaphorically used words in research articles on criminal law as part of a cross-linguistic case study of metaphor in English and Lithuanian academic legal discourse in which at first MIP procedure was applied.To make up a study corpus, ten articles published in the period 2011-2013 were collected from research journals dealing with legal matters: Teisė ('Law') in Lithuanian and Journal of Criminal Justice in English (5 articles from Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt each journal).The total study corpus consisted of over 55,000 words (a 23,670-word Lithuanian subcorpus and a 32,191-word English sub-corpus).The primary aim of that study was to detect and analyse the most productive metaphors that shape the understanding of law-related concepts in the two languages and its results have been reported in a recently-published article (Urbonaitė 2015).
However, another important goal of the study was to test the MIP and MIPVU tools for the identification of metaphor in Lithuanian.After the initial procedure of metaphor recognition using MIP, the data were once again analysed applying MIP's successor MIPVU to get more objective results and see how both the older and the improved versions of the tool work in identifying linguistic metaphor in the Lithuanian language.To establish the meanings of lexical units in Lithuanian, two main dictionaries were consulted, namely, the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian (DLKŽ) and the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language [Lietuvių kalbos žodynas] (hereafter, LKŽ).The decision was made to use the online versions of the dictionaries since they are the most recent versions and are updated more frequently than their printed versions.

Methodological issues
This section focuses on some of the major problematic matters that were detected when applying MIP(VU) to identify metaphorically used words in Lithuanian texts.Some of the issues arise when analysing certain nouns used in the locative and instrumental cases, establishing the contextual and basic meanings of lexical units as well as marking the boundaries of lexical units.In addition, some difficulties may be encountered due to a rather limited scope of available dictionaries of contemporary Lithuanian as well as their rather vague structural principles.Finally, some lexical items present a challenge when deciding if their meanings hold a homonymous or polysemous relationship.These methodological difficulties are discussed in greater detail in the sub-sections that follow.

Identifying metaphorical meaning generated by grammatical form
The cognitive account of meaning states that "conceptual categories can be marked not only for vocabulary items in languages but also by the grammars of the languages themselves" (Smith 1993: 531); consequently, the semantic content of such grammatical categories may also give rise to metaphorical meaning.As shown in the example of the application of MIP(VU) in section 2, the tool is based on the comparison of the contextual sense of a word to its potential other, more basic, sense used in other contexts.However, the analysis of the word's meaning alone leaves out the grammatical form of the word which may also contribute to generating metaphorical meaning.In applying the method, several problematic areas have been identified arising mainly due to the fact that the Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt metaphorical meaning in Lithuanian may be motivated not only by the more basic meaning of a lexical unit but also by the interplay between the meaning of a word as well as its grammatical form, for example, the use of the locative case.Consider the following example taken from a research article on criminal law: ( is used in its direct sense.However, the usage of the noun in the locative case (which vaguely corresponds to the usage of the English preposition in+N to refer to a location, place or container) generates a meaning which can be considered metaphorical.The usage of the noun 'code' in the locative case encodes its conceptualisation as a container which is capable of holding, containing information and which has boundaries, interior and exterior.The metaphorical conceptualisation of a (penal) code as a container is also linguistically realised by a consistent use of other expressions in line with such metaphorical mapping.Consider the following example: (3) Taip pat būtų tikslinga papildyti BK 140 straipsnį trečiąja dalimi (…).(T 1) 'It would also be relevant to supplement Article 140 of the PC [Penal Code] by the third section (…).' The verb papildyti ('to supplement') is defined in the DLKŽ as 'to make fuller' and thus is directly related to the quality of an object that has boundaries, interior and exterior and that can be filled and As shown in the above examples, the CONTAINER metaphor is frequently used in the conceptualisation of abstract concepts related to law such as legal documents or the branch of law (criminal law).
However, one of the ways of expressing this type of metaphor cannot be identified as metaphorical by the MIP(VU) tool in Lithuanian.This may also be relevant to numerous other case languages in which the locative case is the main linguistic expression of containment (Luraghi 2003: 23).The fact that MIP(VU) focuses only on metaphor related lexis and disregards grammatical means of metaphor expression does not mean that there is no metaphoricity encoded in the use of grammatical cases.In inflecting languages, such as Lithuanian, nouns have numerous case endings, and a researcher may be challenged as to how s/he should treat metaphoricity which is expressed by grammatical means such as grammatical case.When analysing metaphor in different languages by applying this methodology for metaphor identification, a researcher may be perplexed when coming across a clearly metaphorical expression (e.g. the CONTAINER metaphor discussed above) whose metaphoricity lies in the grammatical case (the locative in this case).This may prove problematic in cases when linguists conduct cross-linguistic analyses of metaphoricity especially if the two languages are structurally and genetically different and encode the same conceptual metaphor by different linguistic means.In addition, it also implies that MIP(VU) may need to be radically adjusted before it works effectively for data of languages other than English.The adjustment would include careful consideration of language-specific (lexico-)grammatical peculiarities and inclusion of additional steps into the protocol so that the identification procedure may tackle metaphoricity that is grammarinduced.
Another grammatical case that may generate metaphorical meaning in the Lithuanian language is the instrumental case.As suggested by the name, the semantics of the instrumental case expresses the "means or manner or implement with which something is done" (Anderson 1993: 186).So, the sentence in Lithuanian provided below may also be considered metaphorical, its metaphoricity being motivated by the usage of the noun nusikaltimas ('crime') in the instrumental case: The expression of instrumentality encoded in the usage of the law-related noun 'crime' in the instrumental case allows one to see this linguistic expression as a realisation of the conceptualisation Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt of crime as an instrument by means of which damage is caused.Such interpretation gains even more validity when considering the use of the verb padaryti ('to do, to make') in the passive voice which encodes the conceptualisation of crime as an instrument with which damage is caused.Metaphorical meaning is motivated in this example not purely by the instrumental case of the noun crime but also by the verb padaryti ('to make, to do, to commit') which adds to the semantic motivation of conceptualising crime in terms of an instrument or tool.
Another common metaphor where the concept of an instrument is used as a source domain to shape legal concepts is that of  (Imamović 2013: 301-302).Although the study carried out by Imamović did not make use of the MIP or MIPVU procedure, her study clearly shows that the metaphorical meaning motivated by the use of (law-related) nouns in the instrumental case has been observed by other metaphor researchers and thus calls for more attention to the role of grammatical cases in encoding metaphorical meaning in language and, as a result, points at the need for (more) systematicity in identifying such linguistic expression as metaphor-related.
One of the solutions may be to follow MIP(VU) and disregard the grammatical form in the analysis of lexical units by just considering their meaning in context.This would facilitate the application of MIP(VU); yet it would lead to non-identification of metaphoricity that is case-induced.Another, a much more laborious, way of solving the described methodological problem would be by adapting the MIP(VU) for the analysis of the Lithuanian language.Potentially, the protocol would include the analysis not only of the meanings of words but also of grammatical forms such as cases.Definitely, such an undertaking would require collaboration of more metaphor researchers and working out the steps in the identification of grammar-driven metaphoricity.
The designers of the MIP(VU) procedure state very clearly that metaphor functions at different levels of language, including morphology and syntax and they are right in claiming that "there is so much metaphor around at all these levels that it is more practical to single out one particular level of linguistic organization that seems most important" for a particular research question to examine (Steen et al. 2010b: 12).One level of usage to be tackled at a time is absolutely fair; however, as demonstrated above, practical issues in applying the method may arise when analysing and comparing data of two (or more) languages that have clear structural differences.
The above problematic aspects of metaphor identification in Lithuanian should not be taken as criticism addressed to the method itself but rather as a need to introduce some changes to make the method work for different languages.Most linguists would agree that due to cross-linguistic variation in encoding and generating metaphorical meaning, researchers have to take into account languagespecific peculiarities and, possibly, develop adaptations of MIP(VU) to identify metaphor in different languages.Although the task of identifying units of analysis in text may seem simple and easy, a systematic demarcation of lexical units may prove rather problematic.What counts as a unit of analysis in identifying metaphor-related words is not always an orthographic word.It is important to be systematic and exhaustive in the examination and annotation of lexical units for metaphorical use (Steen et al. 2010b: 12).Under the methodological rules of MIP(VU), usually the unit of analysis is an orthographic word, except for idioms, phrasal verbs and the so-called polywords, which consist of more than one word but should be treated as one lexical unit.Examples of polywords in English include multiword expressions such as a great deal, or in touch with, due to, or fed up (Steen et al. 2010b: 170).Such multi-word expressions are treated as single units because they conceptually designate a single referent.The researchers who developed MIP(VU) relied on establishing lexical items based on the information already present in the British National Corpus, which provides a list of polywords which should be treated as single lexical units.Because no such list of polywords is available for reference in Lithuanian, it was sometimes difficult to decide if certain expressions should be analysed as single units or divided for analysis into constituent parts, or words.Examples of such expressions would include iš dalies ('in part, partly'), iš tiesų ('really, in reality'), iš lėto ('slowly'), kada nors ('some time, ever'), be galo ('endlessly'), be kita ko ('inter alia'), turėti omenyje ('keep in mind'), be abejonės ('without doubt'/'no doubt') and many others.A decision was made to treat such expressions as single units if they were listed in dictionaries and by running a check of whether they function as individual lexical items that have some features of fixed expressions.

Difficulties in demarcating lexical units
Following the guidelines of the MIP(VU), these fixed multi-word expressions were analysed here as single lexical units based on the fact that they are elements that designate one specific referent.In addition, many of them are provided in DLKŽ as separate dictionary entries, which also gives sufficient basis to treat them as single units rather than decomposable expressions.One way of making the demarcation of lexical units more reliable in the application of the MIP(VU) procedure in Lithuanian would be compiling a list of polywords which could be done as a result of discussions among linguists over debatable cases and more problematic instances in case of disagreement.
Apart from some difficulties in deciding which multi-word expressions should be considered polywords in Lithuanian, the demarcation of lexical units was not always easy in cases of analysing names of institutions and titles of some legal documents.MIP(VU) does not offer detailed guidelines as regards the analysis of proper names and titles.Whereas MIP does not discuss how researchers should analyse proper nouns in examining metaphoricity, MIPVU suggests that those proper nouns and titles that refer to entities included in the dictionary and those that follow the stress pattern of compounds should be treated as single lexical units, whereas other proper nouns should be considered as consisting of individual lexical units (Nacey 2013: 74).In the analysis of such instances as the names of institutions (e.g.Lietuvos Aukščiausiasis Teismas ('Highest [=Supreme] Court of Lithuania') and titles of legal documents (e.g.Lietuvos Respublikos baudžiamasis kodeksas ('Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania'), a decision had to be made whether they be treated as a single lexical unit or divided into constituents which should be examined separately.
Following the logic advocated by MIPVU that polywords are those multiword expressions that denote one conceptual referent, names of institutions or legal documents could also be treated as single lexical units since they designate a particular referent, i.e. a specific institution or a specific legal act.
On the other hand, individual words in the names of the institutions may be interpreted In treating the name of the court as consisting of decomposable lexical units, the word aukštas ('high/tall') would be considered as metaphorical instantiating the metaphor IMPORTANT IS HIGH/UP.
In contrast, analysing each of the words that constitute the name of the court would not be consistent with the MIPVU approach under which the whole expression which designates one referent should be considered one lexical unit.The characteristics of treating the name of the court as a single lexical unit of analysis are its stability (e.g. the adjective aukštas ('high/tall') always used in the superlative case) and its indivisibility into constituent parts (it always appears either in its full form or the acronym LAT).Since the whole name refers to one entity and since such names bear clear structural stability, they could be considered as single units of analysis in applying MIP(VU) in Lithuanian.
Similar difficulties arise when analysing some other names of institutions and titles of documents words in bold could be analysed as metaphorically used lexical units in treating the names as decomposable units and non-metaphorical if an analyst considered the titles as single units of analysis.Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt As a suggestion for prospective application of the protocol in the annotation of metaphorically used language in Lithuanian, especially in dealing with specialist texts that may include numerous titles of documents and institutions, agreement should be reached over such cases and their treatment as either single or decomposable units of analysis in advance.In my analysis, I treated the names of institutions and documents as decomposable units just by following the MIP(VU) guidelines, yet, such cases are similar to proper names and polywords that consist of more than one word but conceptually denote one referent.This seems a valid reason to include such names of institutions and documents into the list of non-decomposable multi-word units of analysis in future identification of metaphor in similar texts in Lithuanian.
Finally, when demarcating lexical units, the analysis of some legal terms was also rather problematic.
One such example is the Lithuanian legal term that denotes 'life imprisonment': (12) (…) laisvės atėmimas iki gyvos galvos.(T 4) liberty-GEN SG deprivation-NOM SG till live-GEN SG head-GEN SG 'life imprisonment' The expression laisvės atėmimas iki gyvos galvos ('life imprisonment') is a legal term that most often occurs in its full form in this way reflecting the syntactic behaviour of a set expression.On the other hand, the term can be divided into at least two segments, i.e., laisvės atėmimas ('deprivation of liberty') and iki gyvos galvos ('for life') in which the first refers to the type of punishment and the second to the length of punishment.Although the expression iki gyvos galvos is not defined in general Lithuanian dictionaries, it is listed in the entry of the word galva ('head') with its meaning given in brackets as "iki mirties" ('until death').Thus it should be treated in applying MIP(VU) to Lithuanian as an idiom, i.e. as a non-decomposable unit used in discourse in a non-metaphorical sense.
Although the MIPVU does not provide a detailed protocol for the analysis of proper names, titles and specialist terminology, it may be necessary to design guidelines for the analysis of such cases since their behaviour in language is akin to fixed expressions due to the stability of their lexical components.Some more examples of expressions that display features similar to set expressions and the demarcation of which into either single or decomposable units of analysis proved problematic include some names of crimes such as draudžiama karo ataka ('prohibited military attack'), kvalifikuotas teroro aktas ('qualified act of terrorism'), nužudymas labai susijaudinus ('murder in a Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt state of passion'), neatsargus gyvybės atėmimas ('negligent homicide'), the legal notion baudžiamoji atsakomybė ('criminal liability') and many other expressions.

Establishing contextual and basic senses of lexical units
Similarly to what the Russian team reported in their study (see Badryzlova et al. 2013a: 79), some difficulties occurred in singling out one basic meaning from all listed in Lithuanian dictionaries, especially in the case of prepositions.For example, in the sentence below it is rather problematic to establish a single basic sense of the preposition pagal ('alongside, according to'): (13) (…) kankinimas yra baudžiamas pagal galiojantį LR BK. (T 1) '(…) torture is punishable alongside [=in accordance with/under] the currently effective Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania.' Establishing the contextual meaning of the preposition pagal is not problematic in this case as one of the definitions provided in DLKŽ includes the sense that the preposition refers to in this context, namely 'in accordance with something, following something or based on something'.However, when it comes to establishing a more basic meaning, it is difficult to decide which of the other two meanings provided serves as a more basic one to compare the contextual meaning with because at least two meanings provided may serve as more basic ones: 1) 'alongside, next to, beside (to denote location)'; 2) 'used to denote direction'.Both of these senses may be considered basic as they are both more concrete (what they evoke is easier to imagine or see) than its contextual meaning ('in accordance with').
Following the MIP(VU) guidelines, in order to determine if the contextual meaning has a more basic contemporary meaning, a researcher needs to identify one basic meaning of a lexical unit analysed.
However, in example ( 13) above both senses given may be considered equally basic and the contextual sense may be compared with both of them.Obviously one can establish a clear contrast between the basic senses and the contextual sense and in both cases a metaphorical relationship between them may be identified.In this regard, it is fair to say that both meaning 1 and 2 can be considered to be equally basic and both serve well to decide that the relationship between both of them and the contextual sense is metaphorical.The comparison of being in accordance with (the contextual sense) the provisions of the Criminal Code and either lying next to or alongside with an object (basic sense 1 given above) or following the direction of something (sense 2 given above) reveals a metaphorical relationship between the two senses of the word.It follows, then, that Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt establishing one basic sense of the word in order to contrast it with the contextual one may sometimes be difficult and, perhaps, not even necessary.As evident from the example given above (13), if there is more than one basic sense that metaphorically helps understand the contextual sense of the word when identifying metaphorically used words in discourse, analysts may make their decisions based on the fact that there are either one or more basic senses that have metaphorical relation with the contextual sense of the lexical item.

Lexicographic issues in applying MIP(VU) to Lithuanian
First of all, lexicographic issues may be a certain concern regarding structural principles of available Lithuanian dictionaries.One of the key principles of MIP(VU) in identifying metaphorically used words in discourse is establishing contrast between the contextual and the basic contemporary senses of the word.In applying MIP(VU) to English, two primary points of reference in identifying meanings of words include the Macmillan Dictionary and the Longman Dictionary of contemporary English.
According to MIP(VU) proponents, the choice is based on the fact that they are recent and corpusbased (Steen et al 2010b: 186).The fact that a dictionary used as a reference point should be corpusbased has been standardised and become a norm in MIP(VU) (ibid: 124).In contrast, for Lithuanian there are no such corpus-based dictionaries compiled yet and analysts have no choice but to refer to the existing dictionaries.As a result, meanings of words found in such dictionaries may sometimes prove obsolete or not even be included, which may aggravate the procedure of establishing word senses in Lithuanian.
In addition, one more lexicographic issue in the application of MIP(VU) to Lithuanian is related to word classes.In the framework of MIPVU (but not MIP), there is a requirement not to cross the word class boundaries in comparing contextual and basic senses of words, thus analysts cannot compare the contextual meaning of a verb to its basic meaning as a noun.In other words, in MIPVU framework lexical units are confined to word classes, not lemmas, thus, for example, in English the noun dog is taken as a lexical unit that is distinct from the verb to dog even though one can see a metaphorical relationship between the meanings of the two words (Steen et al. 2010b: 16-17).The procedural requirement to identify and compare only the meanings of the word belonging to that part of speech in which it was used in the text analysed and disregard derivational features caused some difficulty in Lithuanian, too.The most common problem was the analysis of deverbal nouns, which are most frequently defined in dictionaries through the meanings of verbs that they derive from.For example, in both, DLKŽ and LKŽ the noun plėšimas ('robbery') is defined through the verb that has the same Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt morphological root, i.e. plėšti ('to rob' (legal, contextual sense); 'to tear (off)'; 'rip off' (basic sense)), cf. Figure 1  Other common deverbal nouns the meanings of which had to be determined through the verbs that the nouns derive from were nusikaltimas ('crime'), kankinimas ('torture'), žalojimas ('causing bodily harm'), (už)draudimas ('prohibition, ban'), (laisvės) atėmimas ('deprivation of liberty, imprisonment'), etc.It also applies to some de-adjectival adverbs whose meanings need to be defined by the meanings of the adjectives with the same root, for example, glaudžiai ('closely') (from glaudus), žiauriai ('violently') (from žiaurus), nuosekliai ('consistently') from nuoseklus ('consistent') and many others.Referring to the meanings of the root words may also be necessary in analysing some denominal adjectives as well thus making adjustments to the requirements of the MIPVU tool.
Apart from derivational aspects described above, some difficulties in the application of MIP(VU) to Lithuanian arise due to the fact that general dictionaries do not provide meanings of some specialist terms and analysts need to refer to specialist dictionaries in order to establish the contextual meanings of words.Another problem occurs because DLKŽ, which was used as a primary source to consult the words' meaning, is of a rather limited scope and sometimes simply does not contain words that are found in the research data.The substitute dictionary used to determine the meaning(s) of the lexical units in question was the 20-volume LKŽ; however, consulting it was also sometimes rather problematic because many of the senses provided in it are obsolete and can hardly be considered contemporary, which is the key factor in the MIP(VU) framework.

Homonymy vs polysemy
Finally, difficulties in relation to the application of MIPVU to Lithuanian may also occur in determining if the contextual and the basic meaning of the words hold a polysemous or a Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt homonymous relationship, especially if the same word is used in a legal sense or a general sense not related to the legal one.For example, determining if the two senses of the word plėšimas ('robbery' and 'tearing, ripping off') bear the relationship of homonymy or polysemy is not easy since the meaning of this deverbal noun is defined through the meaning of the verb plėšti which may have both a legal ('to rob') and a general basic sense ('to tear'; 'to rip off').Usually homonyms are presented as separate dictionary entries and this may help make a decision if an analyst deals with two different words or one word with different meanings.However, both dictionaries in Lithuanian provide all the senses of the word plėšti in one entry.The comparison of the contextual (legal) and the basic senses of the noun allows inferring that the two meanings do contrast and that the contextual sense may be understood via the more basic (something that is easier to see, feel and related to bodily action) sense.
Similarly to tearing things or ripping them off, robbery involves the act of taking someone else's possessions illegally usually by also using force to enter a victim's residence or another location.
However, the question if we should treat the two senses as bearing a polysemous relationship or rather consider the two as separate words that are unrelated and thus bear a homonymous relationship proves problematic.For the sake of clarity and consistency, in my study I treated this word as metaphorical, such a decision made mostly on the basis that there is one dictionary entry for the word which includes both the contextual and the basic sense whereas the basic sense helps understand the contextual sense by means of comparison.Yet it still remains quite a subjective decision that could be resolved by involving more researchers into the process of decision making.At the same time, it suggests that it may be relevant to revise the structure of all available Lithuanian language dictionaries and the principles of their design.Clearer boundaries between meanings of words and separate dictionary entries for homonymous words would contribute to more effective and more reliable interpretation of words, their meanings and the complex relationships they hold.Since the main source in applying the MIP(VU) is dictionaries of contemporary language, it is very important to ensure that the information provided in them is based on contemporary data and that dictionary entries are designed systematically.
This section has dealt with the most common issues in applying MIP(VU) to the Lithuanian data yet the list of methodological issues discussed so far is not finite.The four types of difficulties explicated are related to the identification of metaphor at the level of language, or the surface level, whereas more difficulties may occur when reconstructing conceptual metaphors from the identified linguistic ones, for example, the level of abstractness, or the fuzzy boundaries between metaphor, metonymy Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt and personification.Due to the limited scope of the article such issues have not been discussed.
However, they deserve more attention among metaphor researchers.

Conclusion
The main aim of this article was to report the results of the MIP(VU) applied for linguistic metaphor recognition in Lithuanian.Bearing in mind that the methodological tool was created and developed for metaphor identification in English (an analytical language), the key interest was to apply the methodology to Lithuanian (a synthetic language).The main methodological issues centred round such aspects as the identification of metaphorical meaning in context deriving from the metaphorical use of grammatical cases, especially the locative and the instrumental, some limitations in the availability in sufficient dictionaries of contemporary Lithuanian, demarcation of lexical unit in accordance with the MIP(VU) protocol, the issue of adjusting the MIP(VU) due to morphological and other lexico-grammatical features of Lithuanian and the usage of Lithuanian dictionaries in establishing contextual and basic meanings of words.
The application of the MIP(VU) to Lithuanian has demonstrated that due to significant differences in terms of structure and numerous morphological features of Lithuanian, the MIP(VU) tool may need to be adjusted in order to enable analysts to identify metaphorical meanings generated by both lexical and grammatical elements.Since in an inflecting language such as Lithuanian metaphorical meanings may be generated by semantics of grammatical elements, disregarding them completely in metaphor identification would lead to ignoring many cases of grammar-induced expression of metaphoricity.
In order to detect metaphor encoded by both lexical and grammatical means of expression, a radical adjustment to the MIPVU procedure would require including into the protocol the analysis of both meanings of lexical units as well as the meaning generated by grammatical form such as cases.
The sometimes problematic step of demarcating lexical units in Lithuanian texts reveals that we as analysts need to discuss and set up more precise rules regarding the analysis of some borderline cases such as, for example, proper names, names of institutions, and titles of documents.A tentative suggestion is made in this article to treat them as single units of analysis because they bear similarities to set expressions and usually refer to single referents.
Slight adjustments of the original MIP(VU) protocol may be necessary in dealing with specialist discourses and analysis of highly technical and professional vocabulary making it necessary to refer Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt to specialist dictionaries in order to establish contextual meanings of words.In determining the basic meaning of lexical units, considerable difficulty may arise when singling out one specific meaning that serves as a basic sense against which the contextual meaning is to be compared.It is therefore suggested that more than one meaning of the word which meets the "concreteness" or "bodyrelatedness" criterion may be distinguished rather that strictly requiring analysts to establish one specific meaning of all the senses provided in dictionaries.Due to the specificity of Lithuanian dictionaries and their structure as well as language-specific aspects of word building, the MIPVU rule not to cross the word class boundaries had to be broken since Lithuanian dictionaries fail to include a number of words.The dictionaries tend to redirect their users to other words that have the same root but belong to a different part of speech.
Finally, the analysis of words and their meanings based on available dictionaries in Lithuanian shows that it may be problematic to distinguish cases of polysemy and homonymy since both related and unrelated meanings of many words in Lithuanian dictionaries are treated in a single entry.This might give rise to more subjectivity of research results since analysts establish the relationship between the provided meanings of the words in the available dictionary entry based on their individual decisions.
The difficulties encountered during the testing of the tool on the Lithuanian language data demonstrate that a modified version of the procedure may need to be developed for more effective metaphor identification in this language yet the key principles of the MIPVU are effective and sufficient.The study has demonstrated that a metaphor researcher working on Lithuanian needs to decide that if s/he chooses to employ the MIPVU tool, adaptations and adjustments of the procedure might be necessary.
The present paper is the result of my own individual work.More reliable results, I believe, can be attained joining the forces of a team of several researchers.Hopefully, the paper and the problematic issues raised in it might encourage cooperation among metaphor researchers working on inflecting languages, such as Lithuanian.They might eventually develop a protocol similar to MIPVU or its Lithuanian version.

CMT-Conceptual Metaphor Theory
GEN-genitive case Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt basic meaning of words based on their definitions provided in available dictionaries of Lithuanian and the fuzzy boundaries between homonymy and polysemy.Firstly, difficulty may arise in identifying metaphorically used nouns the metaphoricity of which is generated by grammatical cases.
Since MIP(VU) tool does not provide a solution for identifying metaphoricity which is case-induced, a researcher may need to make adjustments to the procedure or disregard metaphoricity generated by such grammatical cases as the locative or the instrumental.To develop an adjusted MIP(VU) procedure which would include steps of tackling grammar-induced metaphoricity in Lithuanian would require linguists' collaboration yet it could prove to be an effective undertaking.Secondly, in marking lexical units for metaphor in Lithuanian difficulties may occur in demarcating lexical units.
The most common difficulty was met in demarcating polywords and some proper nouns, especially law-related terms such as names of institutions or documents which tend to consist of many words.
As a suggestion, for more effective prospective application of the procedure it may be helpful to include proper nouns into contemporary dictionaries of contemporary Lithuanian.Since they designate a single referent at the conceptual level, it is fair to treat them as individual units of analysis.
Thirdly, Lithuanian researchers may face difficulty in the procedural step of establishing contextual and basic meanings of the words, namely, in singling out one basic meaning from all listed in the dictionary.However, sometimes two or more senses provided in the dictionary may be equally suitable in meeting the criterion of being more basic, concrete.Since identifying a single basic meaning is sometimes hardly possible, the author of the paper suggests that the restriction of determining only one basic meaning might not be necessary.In addition, another important area of concern in determining the meanings that has been observed is the need for more extensive, more recent corpus-based dictionaries of Lithuanian.In addition to the structural lexicographic issues, many words in available Lithuanian dictionaries are defined with reference to other parts of speech, which might pose some difficulty and force a researcher to adjust the procedure.Finally, determining if two meanings (contextual and basic), are homonymous or polysemous is not always entirely unproblematic either.As regards lexicographic issues, MIP(VU) would be applied more effectively if a more extensive corpus-based dictionary of contemporary Lithuanian was compiled.

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more concrete; what they evoke is easier to imagine, see, hear, feel, smell, not necessarily the most frequent meanings of the lexical unit.c) If the lexical unit has a more basic current/contemporary meaning in other contexts than the given context, decide whether the contextual meaning contrasts with the basic meaning but can be understood in comparison with it.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Word entry in DLKŽ and LKŽ LEGAL DOCUMENT IS AN INSTRUMENT/TOOL and LEGAL MEASURE IS A TOOL/INSTRUMENT which may be encountered in both English and Lithuanian and which may find linguistic expression in Lithuanian not only in the usage of nouns denoting legal notions used in the instrumental case but also in other vocabulary related to instruments and their usage.Consider these examples which illustrate the systematicity of the INSTRUMENT metaphor in English and Lithuanian: Taikomoji kalbotyra 2015 (7), www.taikomojikalbotyra.lt acts, the instrumental case is treated as one means of the linguistic expression of metaphor LEGAL ACTS ARE INSTRUMENTS Imamović (2013)ication of these instruments in everyday correctional practice(…).(JCJ4)(9)(…)baudžiamojo ir auklėjamojo poveikio priemonės.(T4)'(…)penal and reformative measures [=sanctions].'(10)(…)thecommunity will utilize law enforcement when necessary.(JCJ1)One of the linguistic means of expressing this metaphor, though, cannot be captured by the application of the MIP(VU) in inflecting languages such as Lithuanian, namely, the use of abstract nouns in the instrumental case.Whereas in inflecting languages the instrumental case plays an important role in the expression of metaphorical instrumentality, in many analytical languages the same meanings are expressed by means of prepositional phrases.Thus in English the semantic role of an instrument is typically expressed by nouns with the prepositions with and by.The MIP(VU) tool allows analysing prepositions as individual lexical units and thus identify their meanings as metaphorical, whereas in languages that mark nouns for the instrumental (or any other) case, metaphorical instrumentality may be encoded by the grammatical case (when the noun used in the instrumental case denotes a more abstract notion) but the metaphoricity remains unrecognised because MIP(VU) method does not take into account grammatical forms.This becomes an important issue when detecting metaphorically used words in languages that have retained grammatical cases such as Lithuanian, Russian, or, for example, the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.I mention the latter set of languages because they are particularly relevant in this context.In a recent study byImamović (2013)who analysed metaphor and metonymy in a corpus of higher education Urbonaitė, J. Metaphor identification procedure MIPVU: an attempt to apply it to Lithuanian.