Plan: Introduction 3 Main body 15

Ordinary and Inverted Similes
In ordinary similes the TO stands in pre-position to the RO (For example: “All the Tarleton girls were as unruly as colts and wild as March hairs” whereas in inverted similes, due to the dislocation of their components, it is the RO that precedes the TO, the motivation of the comparison being syntactically emphasized, thus adding more expressiveness to the simile.
Example: Indeed, like gulls resting on a ship’s mast, they were sitting in the absolute tower of the tree.
Example: Like an inspired frog, Riley hopped and caught hold of one of the sheriff’s dangling boots.
Example : Dull as a flower, Stephany sat down on a stone.
Patent and Latent Similes
We define as patent those similes in which the comparative predication is always explicitly realized by a three-componential structure. For example: “The rain had thickened like a deepening scale of piano notes, it struck its blackest chord and drummed into a downpour that did not at once reach us”. In opposition to patent similes, we define as latent those similes in which the comparison of heterogeneous objects is only implied, being represented in a reduced form by an attributive syntagma that can be reconstructed in a simile, when necessary.
Example: So pretty she was, so self-possessed. She frightened him. Those cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate carves.
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Hamilton, Anne-Marie. 1998. “The Endurance of Scots in the United States.” Scottish Language 17: 108-18.
Example: Scarlett’s thick black eyebrows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin.
Example: Harwey Klausner was a whole head taller than Michael and had apple-red cheeks. The italicized attributive syntagmas in the above-given examples can be treated as latent forms of similes as they can be reconstructed in the three-componential sturcture of similes: “Those cornflower-blue eyes” = Those eyes that were as blue as cornflowers; “her magnolia-white skin” = Her skin was as white as magnolia; and “apple-red cheeks” = cheeks, that were as red as an apple. The research has revealed that the comparative predication can be made implicit mostly in those similes in which the TO is qualified according to some color. We consider that such a reduction is quite natural as the information implied in an attributive syntagma is not communicatively relevant since it constitutes the shared part of the background knowledge of the communicants (i.e., the auther and the reader).