# If Paris is a person



## Honki

Hi.

A grammar book of mine gives sentences (1) and (2) below:

(1)　If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is its heart.
(2)　If the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris, the Seine is the aorta.

These are conditional sentences containing metaphorical expressions.

*Question:*
Is example (3) below a correct sentence? Does example (3) make sense?

(3)　If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.

In my view, example (3) is grammatically and semantically correct.

Would you please give me your opinions and comments about sentence (3)?

Thank you in advance.


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## lingobingo

Grammatically correct? Yes. Semantically? Well, that’s a matter of opinion. By failing to mention the figurative “heart” of Paris, you greatly distance the concept of the river being the city’s “aorta” (“main artery” would anyway be more idiomatic).


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## Loob

I agree with lingo.

Your sentence would make a lot more sense if it read
3a)　If Paris was/were a person, the Seine would be its aorta.

Paris isn't a person....


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## Honki

lingobingo said:


> Grammatically correct? Yes. Semantically? Well, that’s a matter of opinion. By failing to mention the figurative “heart” of Paris, you greatly distance the concept of the river being the city’s “aorta” (“main artery” would anyway be more idiomatic).


Sentence (3) is used as metaphorical or figurative.


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## burningpocket

Sentence 3 is grammatically correct. However, as the aorta is part of the heart, it is oddly specific to compare something to the aorta of a person. The first two sentences show sort of a hierarchy of the body, and lead into each other. The Seine is the aorta of the Île de la Cité, which is the heart of Paris. Without mentioning the heart it doesn't sound right. I believe that is also what lingobingo was saying in their post.


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## Honki

Loob said:


> I agree with lingo.
> 
> Your sentence would make a lot more sense if it read
> 3a)　If Paris was/were a person, the Seine would be its aorta.
> 
> Paris isn't a person....


Thank you for your comment, Loob.
I have understood what you said. However, in fact, sentences (1) and (2) are given in a grammar book of mine.

I would like to know whether or not sentence (3) itself makes sense.


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## Honki

burningpocket said:


> Sentence 3 is grammatically correct. However, as the aorta is part of the heart, it is oddly specific to compare something to the aorta of a person. The first two sentences show sort of a hierarchy of the body, and lead into each other. The Seine is the aorta of the Île de la Cité, which is the heart of Paris. Without mentioning the heart it doesn't sound right. I believe that is also what lingobingo was saying in their post.


Does sentence (3) sound odd if you have understood sentence (3) as metaphorical or figurative?

(3)　If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


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## burningpocket

Yes. Understanding the sentence to be a metaphor, you are comparing two things. You are making an analogy that compares the Seine's relation to Paris to the aorta's relation to the body. However, the aorta's relation to the entire body is oddly specific for this situation. The aorta is a part of the heart, which is an organ in the body. The aorta is related to the heart, and the heart related to the body. But not the aorta to the heart. Therefore, it makes sense to say
"If Paris is a person, the Seine is its heart."
or
"If Paris is the heart, the Seine is its aorta."
 but not
"If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta."

There is no other way to interpret the sentence than metaphorically. And it does not make sense in its context.


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## Loob

Honki said:


> Does sentence (3) sound odd if you have understood sentence (3) as metaphorical or figurative?
> 
> (3)　If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


Well, it sounds pretty strange to me.
But I guess it would work if you translate it as "Let's imagine that Paris is a person. If we do that, then the Seine is its aorta".


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## lingobingo

Honki said:


> Does sentence (3) sound odd if you have understood sentence (3) as metaphorical or figurative?
> 
> (3)　If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


It’s not just your sentence 3 that’s figurative. 1 and 2 are too. The whole concept is figurative. 

Your version is grammatical but a strange thing to say, because you’re making an illogical-sounding leap from comparing a city to a person to describing a river in that city as its aorta (a word not everyone will even know the meaning of). The point is that you’ve missed out the connecting analogy – of the Île de la Cité, an island located in the river, being the *heart* of the city – that would make sense of your statement.


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## Honki

[Threads have been merged at this point.  DonnyB - moderator.]
Hi.

A grammar book of mine gives sentence (1) below:

(1) If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is its heart. 　

In my view, sentence (1) involves what is called metaphor.

*Question:*
Look at sentence (2) below.
Is sentence (2) a metaphorical expression?

(2) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.

Sentence (2) is what I constructed by imitating sentence (1).

As I repeat again, does sentence (1) involve metaphor?
Would you please give me your comments about sentence (1)?

Thank you in advance.


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## grassy

Yes, it's a metaphor.
The sentence seems strange because it assumes Paris is a person. Maybe it fits the context. The following would make more sense to me:
_If Paris was a person, the Île de la Cité would be its heart._


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## Uncle Jack

Sentence (1) does indeed involve metaphor, rather explicitly pointed out in this case. A far more common form of metaphor would be to say that "The  Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris".

However, "heart" is very common in metaphor, because it is traditionally the seat of the emotions (or moral courage, or love, depending on what you are describing). The aorta is merely a blood vessel; it has no metaphorical significance, and your sentence (2) sounds rather macabre.


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## lingobingo

You can’t say “if Paris *is* a person”, when clearly it isn’t! You need to express it hypothetically: If Paris was/were a person, the Ile de la Cité would be its heart. I’m not sure if that kind of statement can itself be regarded as a metaphor, but if (like Victor Hugo?) you described Notre-Dame as “the beating heart of Paris”, that would be a metaphorical reference.


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

Note though that there's an expression "If (name) is a (something), [then] I'm (something else, usually in the same category).", which you clearly aren't, with the meaning "I don't think/believe [that ] (name) is (something)." An example: "If he's a successful businessman, I'm Bill Gates!"


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## lingobingo

It always used to be “If [something very unlikely] is true, I’m a Dutchman!” I have no idea why…


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## Honki

Uncle Jack said:


> Sentence (1) does indeed involve metaphor, rather explicitly pointed out in this case. A far more common form of metaphor would be to say that "The  Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris".
> 
> However, "heart" is very common in metaphor, because it is traditionally the seat of the emotions (or moral courage, or love, depending on what you are describing). The aorta is merely a blood vessel; it has no metaphorical significance, and your sentence (2) sounds rather macabre.


Thank you for your comment, Uncle Jack.

I would like to ask you a question.
Are sentences (1') and (2') below more natural?

(1') If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris.
(2') If Paris is a person, the Seine is the aorta of Paris.



grassy said:


> Yes, it's a metaphor.
> The sentence seems strange because it assumes Paris is a person. Maybe it fits the context. The following would make more sense to me:
> _If Paris was a person, the Île de la Cité would be its heart._


Hi, grassy.

I have realized that sentence (1) can be used in a subjunctive/hypothetical version.
However, I would like to know about sentence (2).


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## grassy

Honki said:


> Hi, grassy.
> 
> I have realized that sentence (1) can be used in a subjunctive/hypothetical version.
> However, I would like to know about sentence (2).





Honki said:


> (2) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


There's nothing wrong with it grammatically (in the right context).
As far as the metaphor is concerned, while something being the heart of something else (e.g. _Heart of Darkness_) is a pretty established metaphor, it's rather unclear why you'd compare the Seine to the aorta: are you trying to be gory? Are you perhaps trying to mock the idea of talking about places in terms of body organs?


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## Uncle Jack

Honki said:


> Are sentences (1') and (2') below more natural?
> 
> (1') If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris.
> (2') If Paris is a person, the Seine is the aorta of Paris.


No not at all. Apart from retaining the present indicative, English speakers have a great dislike of repetition (except for rhetorical effect, which is not the case here)


Honki said:


> Hi, grassy.
> 
> I have realized that sentence (1) can be used in a subjunctive/hypothetical version.
> However, I would like to know about sentence (2).


You haven't expressed it in the subjunctive mood though, and whatever applies to (1) would also apply to (2).


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## Honki

grassy said:


> There's nothing wrong with it grammatically (in the right context).
> As far as the metaphor is concerned, while something being the heart of something else (e.g. _Heart of Darkness_) is a pretty established metaphor, it's rather unclear why you'd compare the Seine to the aorta: are you trying to be gory? Are you perhaps trying to mock the idea of talking about places in terms of body organs?


Thank you for your comment, grassy.

Look at sentences (1) and (3) below:

(1) If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is its heart.
(3) If the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris, the Seine is the aorta.

Sentences (1) and (3) are examples actually given in a grammar book of mine.
As I repeat again, in my view, the so-called metaphor operates on sentences (1) and (3).
So I would like to know about conditional sentences where metaphorical expressions are used.

Once again, thank you for your comment.
I have thought that sentence (2) has no problem in the right context.

(2) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


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## lingobingo

I found it very hard to believe that any grammar book would include such a weird statement as (3), but then I found it online: Grammatical Constructions


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## velisarius

Here they call it a meta-metaphorical conditional :
Mappings in Thought and Language


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## Uncle Jack

I don't see any particular problems with using metaphors in conditional sentences (how about: "If music be the food of love, play on"), and I am struggling to work out what exactly you find problematical about them.

Your sentence (1) is unusual because the metaphor is explicitly stated. Usually in English no attention is drawn to metaphors, as in my example in post #3 ("The Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris"), and listeners/readers are expected to identify metaphors for themselves. However, it might be necessary in conditional sentences since both your grammar book examples and my quote from Shakespeare do this - although perhaps I should say they are only half-explicitly stated, since both "food" and "heart" are themselves metaphors (presumably this is why they are called "meta-metaphorical" in velisarius' post #12).

However, while you are concentrating on the construction of the sentences, you appear to be ignoring the meaning, which is why you don't see how wrong your sentence (2) is. Grammatically it may be fine, but it creates a particularly unpleasant image.

In sentence (1), "heart" is already understood as being the seat of the emotions, or the soul, or some other such thing, rather than being purely a biological organ. So your sentence (1) in effect says that the Île de la Cité is the soul of Paris. This is fine.

You have then taken the same construction but used "aorta" instead of heart. Aorta has no metaphorical meaning. When you say that the Seine is its aorta, all we think of is something like a patient in a hospital operating theatre with a bloody aorta exposed to view. Perhaps you can understand my revulsion.

However, sentence (3) is rather different. It takes the existing metaphor of the Île de la Cité being the metaphorical heart of the city but then twists it into a literal heart, and we think of the function of the aorta (rather than its physical appearance), carrying the life-sustaining blood to the rest of the body, and so we might imagine the Seine carrying the life of Paris from the Île de la Cité to the rest of the city. Or something like that at any rate.


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## lingobingo

The construction itself is fine. But the reference to an aorta is too grisly for my liking.


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

That's one heckuva link, veli! Impressive!


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## london calling

velisarius said:


> Here they call it a meta-metaphorical conditional :
> Mappings in Thought and Language


I see the book was written in English but by a Frenchman. The Seine has been described as the 'aorta of Paris' (in French it sounds fine, see it here in context, in French - franceculture.fr). It just doesn't work as well when translated into English.


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

Maybe '...the Seine [i. e. its water] is its lifeblood."? Although it includes a synonym for 'gore', it doesn't sound 'gory' to me.


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## Honki

london calling said:


> I see the book was written in English but by a Frenchman. The Seine has been described as the 'aorta of Paris' (in French it sounds fine, see it here in context, in French - franceculture.fr). It just doesn't work as well when translated into English.


Hi, london calling.
Your comment is very helpful.

It seems that one of the reasons why sentence (2) sounds unatural is that English native speakers know little about French culture.

(2) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


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## lentulax

Honki said:


> It seems that one of the reasons why sentence (2) sounds unatural is that English native speakers know little about French culture


?????


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## srk

lentulax said:


> ?????


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## velisarius

london calling said:


> I see the book was written in English but by a Frenchman. The Seine has been described as the 'aorta of Paris' (in French it sounds fine, see it here in context, in French - franceculture.fr). It just doesn't work as well when translated into English.


I only glanced at it, but the sentence in question was taken by the French author from a study by an Eve Sweeter, who whose native language may well be English. The book deals with quite specialised linguistic investigation, and I don't even pretend to understand it.


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## Uncle Jack

Sentence (1), taken from the book is a little odd for using the present indicative. Sentence (3), also from the book, takes the same construction but uses it in a very different way, and works because of its meaning; there is no need to know anything at all about French culture. 

Sentence (2) which @Honki has tried to create by taking "aorta" from sentence (3) and fitting it into sentence (1) does not work at all in English. Whether or not it would work in French is of no concern to us in this forum.


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## london calling

velisarius said:


> I only glanced at it, but the sentence in question was taken by the French author from a study by an Eve Sweeter, who whose native language may well be English. The book deals with quite specialised linguistic investigation, and I don't even pretend to understand it.


I studied French linguistics, not English linguistics, so it isn't my field either. 😊I still think the aorta sentence comes from the French, though. 

I also agree with UJ that honki's new version above does not work in English either.


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## velisarius

Perhaps Professor Sweetser just loves Paris.
Eve Sweetser | UC Berkeley Linguistics

M. Fauconnier denies paternity of the Seine-aorta meta-metaphor. Here he is in a brief document on cognitive linguistics. see page 9.
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~faucon/BEIJING/cogling.pdf


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## london calling

Aha. Well found 👍.


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## Honki

Uncle Jack said:


> Sentence (1), taken from the book is a little odd for using the present indicative. Sentence (3), also from the book, takes the same construction but uses it in a very different way, and works because of its meaning; there is no need to know anything at all about French culture.
> 
> Sentence (2) which @Honki has tried to create by taking "aorta" from sentence (3) and fitting it into sentence (1) does not work at all in English. Whether or not it would work in French is of no concern to us in this forum.


Thank you for your comment, Uncle Jack.

I want to know why sentence (2) sounds more odd than sentence (1); sentences (1) and (2) are grammatically correct.
I think that probably English speakers don't associate sentnece (2) with a right context where sentence (2) can be used.
In a right and appropriate contenxt, sentence (2) as well as sentence (1) can be used with no difficulty, I think.

(1) If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is its heart.
(2) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.


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## Uncle Jack

Honki said:


> I want to know why sentence (2) sounds more odd than sentence (1); sentences (1) and (2) are grammatically correct.


Correct grammar is only a small part of whether or not a sentence is correct in English. Sentences must have meaning, and the meaning of a sentence can be conveyed in several different ways, including metaphor.

You will have seen from other posts that your sentence (1) is cited as being (and may well have been deliberately written to be) an example of a "meta-metaphorical conditional". That is, a metaphor involving another metaphor. This other metaphor is "heart", which is understood not as a bodily organ but as a metaphor for the soul (I think the soul is what is meant here, although "heart" does have other metaphorical meanings), and it is this and only this that gives the sentence meaning.

"Aorta" does not have a metaphorical meaning; it is only understood as a blood vessel. We might, in a suitable situation, be led to think of its function rather than its form, and this is what sentence (3) does, rather cleverly in my opinion, but in sentence (2) we only think of form, of a person's bloody insides.

Because "aorta" is not a metaphor for anything, sentence (2) cannot be a "meta-metaphorical conditional". It is this that makes sentence (2) different from sentence (1), even though the grammatical structure is the same.


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## lentulax

Honki said:


> I want to know why sentence (2) sounds more odd than sentence (1)...In a right and appropriate contenxt, sentence (2) as well as sentence (1) can be used with no difficulty, I think.
> (1) If Paris is a person, the Île de la Cité is its heart.
> (2) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.



You can get away with (1) because the associations of 'heart' are so vague that it can be given meaning, whether or not you know anything about France and its culture. Sentence 2), as every native speaker has insisted above, would never be spoken/written by a native speaker because it makes no sense.

In what sense , if Paris is considered a person, might the Îe de la Cité be thought of as its heart? Well, it's often spoken of as the historical and geographical heart of Paris - so what does that mean? The heart isn't literally at the centre of the body - though you might say the Île is roughly at the centre of Paris. The heart has no historical significance for the person. 'Heart' is in fact here just used to convey a general idea of 'central' or 'of central importance' - since Paris (or medieval Paris - I can't remember) was founded on the Île, which was once the centre of intramural Paris, the Île clearly has great historical significance, as well as geographical.   'Heart' is also used, for obvious reasons, to signify 'of vital importance' - is this so of the Île ? No. It does of course house a few important institutions - notably the Préfecture de Police, the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame - but to suggest that it is as vital to Paris as the heart is to a living being is obviously not the case. But we get the general idea - it's at the centre of Paris and is a vital  link to the history of the city.

So, if the Île is the heart, the Seine is the aorta? Really?  'Aorta' is quite a technical word in English; roughly speaking (since I know far less about anatomy even than I know about French culture) it is the means by which the heart supplies oxygenated blood to the body (necessary for the organs to function);  so in what sense does this function, where the aorta is the vital link between the heart and the rest of the body, stand as an image for the function of the Seine in relation to the Ile on the one hand and Paris on the other?  The image fails, of course.

If the image fails at this stage , then it fails too for the third stage : 'If Paris is a person, the Seine is its aorta.' 'Aorta', if it's understood at all (and most English speakers will have at least an imprecise idea) is associated with the heart  - and now (without the intermediate stage) we're simply left wondering where the heart is. Of course, the word 'artery', or 'main artery'  - essential to the life of the body, life-blood flowing through it etc. - has long been familiar as a metaphor for a great river running through a major city (on which the city often did depend a great deal, if less so now) [like 'heart' as a metaphor, no-one worries about medical precision] .  The metaphor in london calling's reference, the Seine as the artère nourricière of Paris, would cause no problems - I'm sure you could find dozens of references to the Thames as the artery of London. 'Aorta' - no.


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## Honki

Thank you for your comments, Uncle Jack and lentulax.

By your comments, I have understood that sentence (2) is odd and basically unacceptable.

OK.

Then, do you judge sentneces (4) and (5) below as correct expressions?

(4) If Paris is a person, the Seine is its artery.
(5) If Paris is a person, the Seine is an artery of Paris.

Sentneces (4) and (5) are interpreted as so-called meta-metaphorical conditionals.

Would you give me your comments about sentences (4) and (5)?


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## Uncle Jack

(5) is obviously wrong since people do not have arteries of Paris.

(4) comes closer to being acceptable, since "artery" does have a metaphorical meaning. However, people have lots of arteries, so saying "its artery" makes no sense. We do not speak of a person's artery (singular).

You could satisfy the person metaphor by saying "one of its arteries", but that wouldn't suit the application to Paris; you presumably do not want to say that Paris has many arteries, of which the Seine is one.

However, I really do not understand why you wish to persist with this construction. It really is so obscure that I cannot think of any situation where you might be able to use it.


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## Honki

Uncle Jack said:


> (5) is obviously wrong since people do not have arteries of Paris.
> 
> (4) comes closer to being acceptable, since "artery" does have a metaphorical meaning. However, people have lots of arteries, so saying "its artery" makes no sense. We do not speak of a person's artery (singular).
> 
> You could satisfy the person metaphor by saying "one of its arteries", but that wouldn't suit the application to Paris; you presumably do not want to say that Paris has many arteries, of which the Seine is one.
> 
> However, I really do not understand why you wish to persist with this construction. It really is so obscure that I cannot think of any situation where you might be able to use it.


Thank you for your comment, Uncle Jack.

Your comment is very helpful.

I want to see metaphorical sentences in which "If Paris is a person" and the words "the Seine" are used.

Is it impossible?


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## Uncle Jack

Honki said:


> I want to see metaphorical sentences in which "If Paris is a person" and the words "the Seine" are used.
> 
> Is it impossible?


No, but what are you trying to achieve? If you just want an ordinary metaphor (not a meta-metaphor, if that is the correct term), then using a conditional sentence would be a very clumsy way of doing it, since it explicitly points out what the metaphor is. We don't usually point out metaphors like this, and if we do we use similes. You might, for example, say that the Eiffel Tower is like a nose projecting from the face of Paris. You could, I suppose convert this into a conditional: "If Paris is a face then the Eiffel Tower is its nose". However, I cannot express how ugly this sounds in English. It is grammatically correct and the meaning is essentially the same as the previous sentence, but no one would ever say such a thing, not unless they were entering a competition for bad writing.

If you want to create a "meta-metaphorical conditional" then you will need to think of a second metaphor, which needs to fit whatever you want to say about Paris. As you have already discovered, this is very difficult to do.

If you want to replicate sentence (3) in the book, quite frankly, forget it. You need an existing meta-metaphor (Paris being a person and the Île de la Cité being its heart) which you can then twist back into a literal meaning to add a third thing as a metaphor. Even if you manage to pull off such a tricky feat, you might have noticed that most native speakers replying to this thread aren't particularly impressed with it. Most of us don't like sentence (1), if it comes to that.


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## velisarius

Sentence #2 is confusing, because Paris is also the name of a famous American woman and of an ancient Trojan.



Honki said:


> If the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris, the Seine is the aorta.



Piling metaphor on metaphor can hardly be done without a rather comic result, I think. We generally avoid mixed metaphors for the same reason.

_If music is the food of love, rap musicians are purveyors of junk food._


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

velisarius said:


> _If music is the food of love, rap musicians are purveyors of junk food_


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## Honki

Hi. I have more questions about conditionals with metaphorical statements.


Look at sentences (6a) and (6b) below. Sentence (6b) is the conditional sentence where the positions of if-clause and the main clause in (6a) are reversed. In this way, sentence (6b) is completely acceptable.

(6a) If it rains tomorrow, the match will be canceled.
(6b) The match will be canceled if it rains tomorrow.

In a grammar book of mine, sentences (7a)-(9a) below are given. These are termed "meta-metaphorical conditionals."

(7a) If the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris, the Seine is the aorta.
(8a) If public transit is the lifeblood of a dynamic city, Vancouver’s in a coma.
(9a) If the beautiful Golden Gate is the thoroughbred of bridges, the Bay Bridge is the workhorse.

*Question:*
Sentences (7b)-(9b) below are conditionals where the positions of if-clause and the main clause in (1a) are reversed.
Are sentences (7b)-(9b) acceptable English?

(7b) The Seine is the aorta, if the Île de la Cité is the heart of Paris.
(8b) Vancouver’s in a coma, if public transit is the lifeblood of a dynamic city.
(9b) The Bay Bridge is the workhorse, if the beautiful Golden Gate is the thoroughbred of bridges.

I would like to know the acceptability of sentences (7b)-(9b).
Would you please give me comments about sentences (7b)-(9b)?


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

Are they acceptable English? Well, I suppose they are structurally, but I would say that stylistically they aren't. At any rate, I'd use (7a), (8a), and (9a).


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## lingobingo

Your (a) examples are not standard conditionals expressing what would happen if a certain condition were fulfilled. They’re conditional constructions used to make a colloquial comment in the form of a comparison based on a proposition or premise. It’s a type of idiom that simply does not work in any other way.

Let’s assume that A is X. If A is X, then – by the same token – you can describe B as Y.​​It’s reminiscent of the sort of fill-the-gap exercises used in English-language teaching in days of yore, such as:

Cat is to kitten as dog is to ———? (answer: puppy)​


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

lingo answered it more clearly .


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## Uncle Jack

What do you mean by "acceptable English"? They are grammatical. They are understandable. But they are very clumsy, and it is impossible to see why anyone would express such a thing. Sentences 8a and 9a are essentially jokes, that have their punchline at the end. If you move the punchline to the beginning, there's nothing to laugh at. Sentence 7a tries to be rather more clever than just being a joke, but it still relies on the same structure with the dramatic flourish at the end. No one would move it to the beginning.


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## Honki

Uncle Jack said:


> What do you mean by "acceptable English"? They are grammatical. They are understandable. But they are very clumsy, and it is impossible to see why anyone would express such a thing. Sentences 8a and 9a are essentially jokes, that have their punchline at the end. If you move the punchline to the beginning, there's nothing to laugh at. Sentence 7a tries to be rather more clever than just being a joke, but it still relies on the same structure with the dramatic flourish at the end. No one would move it to the beginning.


I mean "grammatically and semantically correct" by "acceptable English."


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## Honki

lingobingo said:


> Your (a) examples are not standard conditionals expressing what would happen if a certain condition were fulfilled. They’re conditional constructions used to make a colloquial comment in the form of a comparison based on a proposition or premise. It’s a type of idiom that simply does not work in any other way.
> 
> Let’s assume that A is X. If A is X, then – by the same token – you can describe B as Y.​​It’s reminiscent of the sort of fill-the-gap exercises used in English-language teaching in days of yore, such as:
> 
> Cat is to kitten as dog is to ———? (answer: puppy)​


Thank you for your comment, lingobingo.

Do you judge  (7b)-(9b) as correct English?


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## lingobingo

It depends entirely on your definition of correct. Not breaking any grammatical rules or conventions is not what makes language “correct” in my view. It’s very easy, of course, to use perfect grammar to express complete nonsense.


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