The Transferring Relation in Metaphor and the Mthat Account

In explaining the intelligibility of metaphor, the vital thing to be explained is the transferring relation—how we, with the contextual clues, transfer the semantic propertyof an object or expression in a metaphorical sentence into a suitable one to arrive at the metaphorical content. Yet, Josef Stern proffers the Mthat account to analyze theunderlying structure of understanding metaphor, contrary to those appealing to theanalyses of the entry of expressions. Through reviewing Stern’s own Mthat account and his criticism of contextualism in philosophy of language, I point out that his Mthat hardly succeeds in explaining the intelligibility of metaphor withoutinvestigating into the transferring relation