Linguistic Metonymy: Implicitness and Co-Activation of Mental Content

248 Pages·2018·3.84 MB·English

by  Máté Tóth

Linguistic Metonymy: Implicitness and Co-Activation
of Mental Content
METALINGUISTICA

Herausgegeben von / edited by András Kertész
BAND/VOLUME 29
Máté Tóth
Linguistic Metonymy: Implicitness

and Co-Activation of
Mental Content
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic
data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Original title of the thesis: Delimiting and Classifying Metonymy: Theoretical
and Empirical Challenges in Cognitive Metonymy Research
Opponents (reviewers): Dr. Péter Pelyvás, Dr. Gábor Simon
Supervisor: Dr. Péter Csatár
University of Debrecen
Doctoral School of Linguistics
Programme for modern linguistics

Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg

ISSN 0946-4174
E-ISBN 978-3-631-77142-6 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-77143-3 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-77144-0 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b14806

© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2018
All rights reserved.

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Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 11
1.1 The pre-cognitive linguistic tradition ....................................................... 11
1.2 From the poor sister to ubiquity ............................................................... 12
1.3 Problems under scrutiny ............................................................................ 14
1.4 Metonymy in holistic cognitive linguistics .............................................. 15
1.5 (Pdel): Delimiting metonymy .................................................................. 18
1.6 (Pclass): Classifying metonymy .............................................................. 19
1.7 The relevance of (Pdel) and (Pclass) for the empirical study of
metonymy .................................................................................................... 20
1.8 The structure of the book ........................................................................... 21
2 Metonymy in cognitive linguistics ....................................................... 23
2.1 Cognitive linguistics: basic tenets, goals, and commitments ................ 24
2.2 The cognitive view of metonymy .............................................................. 30
2.3 The ubiquity and primacy of metonymy ................................................. 36
2.4 Relating conceptual and linguistic metonymy ........................................ 42
2.5 Tendencies in research on metonymy ...................................................... 47
2.6 Summary ...................................................................................................... 53
3 Metonymy and metaphor ......................................................................... 55
3.1 The relationship between metonymy and metaphor in CL ................... 55
3.2 Definitional problems ................................................................................. 57
3.2.1 Intra-domain vs. inter-domain mappings ........................................ 59
3.2.2 Contiguity vs. similarity ..................................................................... 60
3.2.3 Domain highlighting vs. domain mapping ...................................... 64
3.3 The interaction of metonymy and metaphor .......................................... 67
8 Contents
3.4 The metonymic motivation of metaphor and the metonymy-
metaphor continuum ................................................................................ 68
3.5 Barcelona’s schematic, unitary definition of metonymy ...................... 71
3.5.1 Degrees of metonymicity ................................................................ 72
3.5.2 Refinement of the notions of domain and contiguity .................. 73
3.5.3 Further examples ............................................................................. 75
3.6 A narrow approach: Warren’s alternative ............................................... 76
3.6.1 Referential and propositional metonymy ...................................... 77
3.6.2 Differences between metonymy and metaphor on the level of
linguistic expressions ....................................................................... 80
3.6.3 Referential metonymy and metaphor ............................................ 80
3.6.4 A new look at earlier examples ....................................................... 83
3.7 Summary .................................................................................................... 86
4 Linguistic metonymy as implicit co-activation of mental
content ............................................................................................................. 91
4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 91
4.2 On the referential nature of metonymy in CL ....................................... 92
4.3 Linguistic metonymy and a broad view of reference ........................... 100
4.4 Linguistic metonymy as co-activation of mental content .................... 106
4.5 The implicitness of linguistic metonymy ............................................... 111
4.6 Linguistic metonymy and related phenomena ...................................... 120
4.6.1 Linguistic metonymy and active zone phenomena ....................... 121
4.6.2 Linguistic metonymy and metaphor ............................................... 124
4.6.3 Linguistic metonymy in comparison and contrast ....................... 134
4.7 Some questions for future research ........................................................ 137
4.8 Summary .................................................................................................... 139
5 A content-based classification of metonymy ................................. 143
5.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 143
Contents 9
5.2 Linguistic metonymy and the conceptual content activated ............... 145
5.3 A content-based classification of metonymy ......................................... 147
5.3.1 Thing-metonymies ........................................................................... 147
5.3.2 Event-metonymies ........................................................................... 151
5.3.3 Property-metonymies ..................................................................... 154
5.3.4 Proposition-metonymies ............................................................... 156
5.3.5 Speech act metonymies ..................................................................... 159
5.4 The content-based approach in comparison and contrast .................. 160
5.5 Summary .................................................................................................... 163
6 Empirical methods in cognitive metonymy research ................ 165
6.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 165
6.2 Data and methods in cognitive metonymy research ............................ 166
6.2.1 Intuition and introspection .............................................................. 167
6.2.2 Contrastive and cross-linguistic investigations ............................. 169
6.2.3 Corpus-linguistic methods ............................................................... 171
6.2.4 Experimentation ................................................................................ 174
6.2.5 Interim summary ............................................................................... 175
6.3 Case study 1: An event-metonymy from a cross-linguistic
perspective ................................................................................................. 175
6.3.1 The ICM of playing musical instruments ....................................... 177
6.3.2 Data from English, German, and Hungarian ................................ 178
6.3.3 Further languages .............................................................................. 181
6.3.4 Conclusion and methodological reflections .................................. 186
6.4 Case study 2: A corpus study of synesthetic expressions as
property-metonymies ............................................................................ 188
6.4.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 188
6.4.2 Synesthetic expressions as property-metonymies ...................... 192
6.4.3 Corpus and procedure ...................................................................... 197
6.4.4 Results of the analysis ....................................................................... 199
6.4.5 Discussion .......................................................................................... 201
6.5 Summary .................................................................................................... 203