Plan: Introduction 3 Main body 15

touching something with a clumsy exploratory paw”.
One of the structural peculiarities of polypropositional similes is that each of the propositions under the comparison has its own predicate (the above-given example serves as an illustration to it). Yet, the analysis of literary texts has revealed a number of similes in which the predicate in the related proposition, being identical with the one in the target proposition, can be made partly or fully implicit, represented correspondingly by a verbal substitute or a zero predicate:


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Fitzgerald, S. (1979). The diamond as big as ritz. Selected short stories. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

2. 
   Panoramic (Background) Similes
   

Panoramic (background) similes are used to designate different natural phenomena, events, or situations against the background of which the plot of the narrative develops. The main peculiarity of these similes lies in the fact that the subject matter in them is represented by, so-called, “argument-elementive” indicating an unanimate active doer of some action, or a thing in some state, such as natural forces or phenomena, celestial bodies, parts of the universe, etc. (e.g., the sun, the moon, the sky, rivers, oceans). Accordingly, the TO in this kind of similes is expressed either by astronyms, hydronyms, floronyms or phenomonyms (i.e., names, denoting different natural phenomena). We differentiate this type of similes into dynamic and static subtypes, the former being realized with the help of verbs denoting action, whereas the latter is based on the qualitative adjectival or verbal static predication.
Example: Dynamic background similes: The sun bounced like a ball against the clouds and the park seemed ready to jump and take off. The creeks crook their way down into the little river that crawls through the woods like a green alligator.
Example: Static background similes: It was a feathery rain fine as gauze curtain. The Montana sunset lay between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky.
Generalizing Similes Generalizing similes semantically proceed from the fore-text, logically summing up the described situations and events via their generalization and subjective evaluation. Hence, the TO in generalizing similes is semantically polypropositional represented by the indexical it which refers anaphorically to the chain of described situations and events, previously identified in the text.
Example: I thought Catherine was dead. She looked dead. Her face was grey, the part of it that I could see.
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Webster’s New World Dictionary Wiley Publishing 2003.