Towards a Theory of Metonymy

Human Cognitive Processing

Volumn 4, Issue , 1999, Pages 17-59

  Radden, Günter ^a   Kövecses, Zoltán ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG   (Germany)

^b EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85114945977     PISSN: 13876724     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1075/hcp.4.03rad     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. This paper elaborates upon an earlier version which appeared in Cognitive Linguistics 9–1 (1998). We are grateful to our anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments. We also wish to express our thanks to Elizabeth Mathis and Gary Palmer for their valuable linguistic contributions to this paper.
2. This view corresponds to Dirven’s (1993: 14) characterization of metonymy as opposed to metaphor: “[...] in metonymy the two domains both remain intact, but they are seen to be in line, whereas in metaphor only one domain, viz. the target domain is kept, and the other domain, viz. the source domain disappears, so to speak.”
3. The attraction of Langacker’s cognitive explanation of metonymy lies in the pervasiveness of reference-point phenomena in language structure, in particular possessive expressions. The view of metonymy as a reference-point phenomenon is, however, not unproblematic. The process of first making mental contact to a reference point before accessing the target should take longer than that of accessing a conceptual entity directly, which, however, has not been confirmed experimentally in terms of processing time (Gibbs 1993).
4. See the discussion of the notion of ‘contiguity’ in Koch (this volume). The notion of contiguity is also present in cognitive definitions as in Croft’s (1993: 347) definition of metonymy as “a shift of a word meaning from the entity it stands for to a ‘contiguous’ entity.”
5. For similar views see Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987), Croft (1993) and Blank (this volume).
6. The word hearse derives from Latin (h)irpicem ‘large rake used as a harrow’ and Samnite (h)irpus ‘wolf,’ i.e., the pins of the harrow were metaphorically related to the wolf’s teeth.
7. In distinguishing metaphor from metonymy, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 36) and Lakoff and Turner (1989: 103) view metonymy as primarily having a referential function, as opposed to the function of understanding associated with metaphor. But this view of metonymy is at odds with the many other areas in which metonymy is found.
8. Frawley (1992: 19–20) illustrates the difference between the extensional world and the mentally projected world by the well-known case of tautologies as in George Bush is George Bush. This sentence is meaningfully interpretable in an attitudinal sense, which may be made explicit by attitude predicates such as wonder, doubt, be uncertain, etc. as in I wonder if George Bush is George Bush. Gibbs (1994: 345–351) has shown that such tautologies are metonymic in that a category is used to refer to specific salient parts or attributes. This analysis is also adopted here (cf. 3.1.(vi)).
9. Cf. Langacker (1993: 31): “it [the active-zone/profile discrepancy] has to be regarded as natural and expected rather than pathological.” Similarly, Herskovits (1985: 363) points out in her discussion of the salience principle that the metonymic shift to a salient part “has come to be so natural that it is hard to think that it involves any special process such as metonymy.” Langacker (1991: 191) even argues that “It is in fact quite difficult to find convincing examples [...] where all aspects of the designated entity participate equally in a relationship.”
10. Cf. the careful distinction between metonymy and synecdoche made by Seto (this volume).
11. On metonymies relating to the hand, see Kövecses and Szabó (1996).
12. See Langacker (1991: Ch. 3). Prototypical substances are characterized by internal homogeneity and divisibility, prototypical things are characterized by internal heterogeneity and integration of its parts into a whole.
13. For a more general distinction between metonymies based on co-presence and succession, see Blank (this volume).
14. The metonymy ACTUAL FOR POTENTIAL also accounts for the development of the possibility sense of the modals can and may. The epistemic sense of can may have developed from the original sense of ‘know’ via ‘knowledge how to do X’ and ‘being able to act’ to ‘increased possibility of acting.’ In a similar chain of sense development, the original sense of may ‘might, power’ may have led to the modal sense of possibility. Studies on grammaticalization have convincingly explained the steps involved in these semantic changes by implicature and pragmatic strengthening.
15. Cf. Lakoff in the discussion on “Semantic Accommodation” in Cogling, May 7, 1994.
16. Objects and animals may, of course, also be associated with a place. A nice example of metonymic association is the proper name Canary Islands, which goes back to the name Canaria given to it by the Romans on account of the many dogs seen there and which later on provided the name for the bird canary, which the Spanish found on the islands.
17. The following semantic constraints identified by Cooper and Ross (1975) correspond to the cognitive principles as used here: Here and Now correspond to IMMEDIATE OVER NON-IMMEDIATE, Singular corresponds to SPECIFIC OVER GENERIC, Animate and Agentive correspond to HUMAN OVER NON-HUMAN, and Count corresponds to BOUNDED OVER UNBOUNDED. Possibly also the remaining semantic constraints are relevant for metonymy.
18. Violation of the communicative principle CLEAR OVER OBSCURE amounts to the same thing as flouting Grice’s maxim of manner.
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