NETMET is a metaphor generator and interpreter designed for use in the humanities. More information on its development and functionality may be found in the following:

Steinhart, Eric. \"NETMET: A Program for Generating and Interpreting Metaphors.\" Computers and the Humanities 28.6 (1995): 383-392. Web.

Program Overview

NETMET was a program for generating and interpreting metaphors developed by Eric Steinhart and first released in 1995 (Steinhart 383). It was intended primarily for humanities research, but was also applicable to other disciplines, such as the sciences or philosphy, where clear theories of metaphor are important (383).

NETMET was a work of computational philosophy of language that translated philosophical theory from natural language text into a computer language program which could then test the theory (Steinhart 384). It treated producing and interpreting metaphors as rule-governed activities to provide at least a partial literal interpretation (Steinhart 383).

Steinhart described it as \"a hybrid computational model, utilizing both the serial symbol processing techniques of classical artificial intelligence and more recent connectionist techniques\" (Steinhart 384). It used lexical semantics to parse input proposition (384). Propositions fell into seven basic kinds, being \"(1) sentential propositions; (2) attribute-value propositions; (3) features; (4) rules; (5) genitive propositions; (6) paradigmatic propositions [and] (7) mereological propositions\" (384).

In Steinhart's view, NETMET was a successful model for generating and interpreting metaphors and confirmed that \"metaphors are at least as rule-governed as literal language\" (Steinhart 391).

Source

Steinhart, Eric. \"NETMET: A Program for Generating and Interpreting Metaphors.\" Computers and the Humanities 28.6 (1995): 383-392. Web.

Note

Eric Steinhart offers NETMET for download on his personal website here.