Between Metaphor and Logical Comparison: Peculiarities of Simile.

The paper treats simile as a category related to metaphor and comparison, being a kind of connecting element between an association (metaphor) and analytics (comparison). The three of them are considered to be universal and connected with the process of thinking with simile and metaphor sharing figurativeness while comparison and simile -- an explicit statement of (dis)similarity. At the same time, a number of differences between these formations are stated, which proves the existence of only certain points of intersection between the considered categories with an emphasis on their differential features. In particular, it is noted that the difference between metaphor and simile, among other things, is the secondary origin of the latter, its ability to explicate comparative relations, to shift the cognitive burden on the producer, a wider potential of comparative possibilities, the ability to appeal to the imagination, using intellect, as well as its narrative nature. The differences between comparison and simile are the capability of the latter to create a special poetic effect by comparing conceptually distant concepts with the non-parity of the salient feature, the tendency to idiomatization and expression of prototypical, sometimes even symbolic meaning, the irreversibility and asymmetry of simile, the possibility of its convertibility into a metaphor, impossibility of its empirical verification because of the coding of the producer's subjective reality, the ability to hyperbolize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]