Conceptual metonymy

Conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies, as two most important cognitive operations, can shape part of an utterance, or even a whole utterance. It may be the case that a single metaphor or metonymy is involved that is lexicalized in a single ex-pression, but they are often not isolated as they occur accompanied by other metaphors and metonymies. In the case of metaphors we may have a metaphor sharing the same traget domain, but drawing on different source domains. It is also possible for both the source and the target domain to be shared, the difference residing in particular lexicalizations, in particular those related to the source domain. We may also find related metaphors within an utterance that exhibit different levels of specificity (e.g. a generic or high-level metaphor and one or more specific or low-level metaphors). In the case of conceptual metonymies we find multi-tiered metonymies, where one concept can simultaneously function as the target of one metonymy and the source of another. Conceptual metonymies can also appear in chains of various complexity.
Metaphors and metonymies can of course intertwine in a number of ways and at vari-ous levels. Barcelona (2000) is of the opinion that metonymy motivates all metaphors, while Kövecses (2013) thinks that correlation metaphors are based on metonymies. Goossens (1990) introduces the term metaphtonymy in order to cover varius ways in which they can interact at conceptual level and produce a single linguistic expression. He distinguishes four possibilities here: metaphor from metonymy, 2. metonymy with-in metaphor, 3. metaphor within metonymy, 4. demetonymization of metonymy. In all these Goossens’s cases involve the interaction of one conceptual metaphor and one conceptual metonymy, but studying of authentic usage reveals that their interaction may be far more complex and can also lead to phenomena like hyperbole or antonomasia.

The paper deals with the way source-in-target metonymy and target-in-source metonymy are used in text on international affairs. In such texts, the notion in the source domain is typically a toponym, but there are cases in which the source can be an ethnonym derived from a toponym. With target-in-source metonymies, the source domain stands for a target sub-domain. With source-in-target metonymies, a source sub-domain stands for a target domain. Both types of metonymy are unidirectional, as the target concept activated by the source concept does not in its turn activate the source concept in the same text. The study traces the way those types of metonymy are exploited in the media and studies the similarities and differences in their use in Bulgarian and English language texts.

U radu se razmatra odnos između kognitivne lingvistike i kritičke analize diskursa, kao i mogućnosti kombinacije ova dva teorijska okvira u empirijskim istraživanjima. Rad počinje pregledom osnovnih teorijskih postulata dveju disciplina, sa posebnim osvrtom na ona polja proučavanja u kojima kognitivna lingvistika i kritička analiza diskursa interaguju. S obzirom da u literaturi već postoje konkretni primeri ovakvih interdisciplinarnih istraživanja, najznačajnije u radu Kristofera Harta (Hart 2010, 2011; Hart & Lukeš 2010), autor u daljem tekstu ukazuje i na dosadašnje pokušaje uparivanja kognitivne lingvistike i kritičke analize diskursa. Nakon toga, u radu će biti prikazan i sam način primene ovako integrisanog pristupa na primeru kritičke analize verbalnih manifestacija pojmovne metonimije u političkom novinskom diskursu. Analiza će biti praćena odgovarajućim ilustracijama. Rad se završava zaključnim razmatranjima i predlozima za dalja istraživanja i produbljivanje međusobnog odnosa između datih teorijskih okvira. [The paper deals with the relationship between cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis, as well as the possibilities of integrating these two theoretical frameworks in empirical research. The paper begins with an overview of the basic theoretical tenets of the two disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the interface between cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis. Bearing in mind that there already exist concrete examples of such interdisciplinary research in the literature, most significantly in the work of Christopher Hart (e.g. Hart, 2010, 2011; Hart & Lukeš, 2010), the author further points to the previous attempts at combining cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis. Next, the paper presents an application of this integrated approach in the example of the critical analysis of verbal manifestations of conceptual metonymy in political newspaper discourse. The analysis is complemented by appropriate examples taken from the two British daily newspapers, The Telegraph and The Guardian. The paper ends with concluding remarks and several suggestions for further research and deeper elaboration of the relationship between the discussed theoretical frameworks.]

Previous literature on the classification of metonymy has mainly concentrated on the relationship between source and target (e.g. Radden & Kövecses 1999, Peirsman & Geeraerts 2006a). More recent, pragmatically oriented classifications are concerned with the role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction, i.e. at which level of meaning construction a certain metonymy is applied as an inferential tool (e.g. Thornburg & Panther 1997, Panther & Thornburg 1999). At the heart of these latter approaches is the assumption that conceptual metonymy cannot be reduced to acts of reference. Interestingly enough, no classification of metonymy has been suggested which concentrates on the type of the mental content participating in the metonymic process. In this paper I outline such a content-based approach. According to the type of the target content the following classes of metonymy can be set up: THING-, EVENT-, PROPERTY-, PROPOSITIONand speech act metonymies, which can be further subdivide...

Research on idioms from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, in particular through conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy in cognitive semantics, has been steadily growing. While there have been quite a few investigations into the role of conceptual metaphors in meaning formation, conceptual metonymies are still left underexplored. This article examines the role of metonymic conceptualization of personality in English and Vietnamese idioms containing "head", "face" and "eyes" from the conceptual metonymy theory of cognitive linguistics. With analyzed examples from 713 English languages and 947 Vietnamese idioms of body parts collected, the article shows that metonymic conceptualization plays an essential part in the formation of meaning. There are many similarities in the way "head", "face" and "eyes" are conceptualized for personality in both English and Vietnamese cultures. However, why Vietnamese body part idioms use a lot of symbolic pairs, English idioms do not. The study suggests more attention to conceptual metonymy in teaching idioms in order to help students infer idiomatic meanings. Rather than asking students to learn by heart the composite meaning of idioms, teachers should encourage them to guess the idiomatic meaning. Besides, conceptual metonymy should be explained to students since it helps language learners infer idiomatic meaning and retain it longer.

This study proposes that metonymy is fundamental to visual meaning making and develops a social semiotic framework to elucidate how conceptual metonymies are realized in both static and moving images. While we all accept that visual images are iconic, this study demonstrates systematically that they are also indexical (i.e. metonymic), in terms of their representation of both objects/events and abstract concepts. Based on the social semiotic visual grammar of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2006), systems of metonymy in actional, reactional, classificational and analytical processes are developed to map out the types of metonymies in visual representation. The metonymy systems bring a wide array of resources under a coherent framework for analysts to scrutinize the choices of representation in visual media such as comics, film and TV commercial. This study develops current theories of multimodal metaphor and metonymy, on the one hand, and provides new insights into the process of visual meaning making, on the other.

This volume looks at spatialization of abstract concepts in verbo-pictorial aphorisms at work in the cartoons of a single artist. While extensive work has been done in studying spatialization of abstract concepts in grammar and lexicon within cognitive linguistics, this book is the first of its kind to provide a detailed account of such phenomena in multimodal discourse. The volume integrates a range of approaches from cognitive linguistics, including image schema theory, conceptual theory of metaphor, multimodal metaphor theory, the dynamic approach to metaphor, and a multimodal approach to metonymy, and applies this multi-faceted framework to a selection of cartoons from the work of Polish artist Janusz Kapusta. Taken together, these cartoons form the basis of two comprehensive case studies which explore the abstract concepts of "emotions" and "life," highlighting the ways in which cartoons can illustrate the important relationship between space, situated cognition, and language and in turn, a clear and systematic framework for establishing cohesive ties between the verbal and pictorial modes in multimodal cognitive linguistic research. The volume sheds new light on visual thinking and multimodal rendition of creative abstract thought.

Today's discussions concerning metonymy abound in distinctions that may be far from obvious for those who would like to get acquainted with the major achievements and directions of research in this fi eld. That is why the article aims to trace the path that metonymy has covered within Cognitive Linguistics from its initial characterisation in the publication by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to the present day. The article attempts to provide a general historical perspective on the phenomenon trying to indicate and discuss both the major trends as well as the consecutive stages in the development of the cognitive thought on metonymy. The author identifi es different directions of expansion of the phenomenon, enumerates different types of metonymy, and its most frequently discussed dimensions. The article is concluded with an attempt to summarize the key elements of progress that has been made in understanding metonymy since 1980.

Abstract Except for metaphor and metonymy, the study of most traditional figures of speech has largely been neglected in Cognitive Linguistics. This article attempts to fill this gap by exploring a broad range of figures of speech in terms of their dependency relations and organizational patterns. It distinguishes between basic and non-basic figures of speech, where the latter arise from variants of the basic cognitive operations that shape the former. It then discusses these figures in terms of their interrelationships, their shared features, and the attitudinal or denotational nature of their meaning effects. The result is a unified account of figurative language.

By Kevin Ezra Moore --
Imagine that today is Monday and, for some reason, you are looking ahead to Friday. You might say something like Friday is a long way off. Although you may not notice it, when you say such a sentence, the way you talk about the time remaining until Friday uses a word that refers to length, the same kind of word you also use on a road trip to talk about the space between you and your destination when you say something like San Francisco is a long way off. When English speakers want to talk about the duration that begins “now” and ends on Friday – as in between now and Friday – they might find it hard to avoid a word like between, whose primary meaning has to do with space, as in an expression like the road between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Similarly, if people say that they are “looking ahead” to Friday, they talk about Friday as if it had a location in space in front of them, but in fact Friday is a time, and it is not located anywhere in any literal way.
This book does not attempt to discover the nature of time itself but rather focuses on how people talk about temporal experience. I use the word time informally to talk about the general phenomenon according to which things do not happen all at once, and according to which we experience a present moment, but (with minor exceptions) time does not appear in this book as a technical term.1 The reason for not using time as a technical term is that the abstract mass noun time does not have a precise, agreed upon definition. (See Turetzky 1998 on the philosophy of time.) Also, the abstract mass noun time does not have a translation equivalent in Wolof. Instead of using the mass noun time as a technical term, I use the count noun time (i.e. times or a time) defined as ‘when an event could happen or a state could obtain’. This use of the word time is roughly equivalent to ‘point or interval of time’ (Klein 2009a: 22).
(This text was made available at the following website: https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-spatial-language-of-time-metaphor-metonymy-and-frames-of-reference-d186649688.html)

This paper focuses on the conception of metaphor in linguistics (the primary theoretical niche of the Handbook of Pragmatics), and, to a lesser extent, philosophical theories of metaphor (philosophy being the first field in which metaphor came to be looked at).
In the linguistic study of metaphor as a whole, two general aspects are important: (i) types of metaphors, i.e. the recognition and classification of different categories of metaphors as linguistic expressions; and (ii) theories of metaphor, i.e. the definition and explanation of metaphor as a linguistic process. This paper focuses on the first aspect, since extensive treatments of the different ways in which metaphors can be classified are relatively rare in the literature on metaphor, while distinctions and relations between theoretical frameworks have often been highlighted (cf. below), albeit not often in a comprehensive manner.
This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, the variation between major types of linguistic approaches to metaphor will cursorily be looked at. Section 3, which forms the greater part of this paper, discusses a number of different classifications of metaphor. After this discussion, these typologies of metaphor are placed in a larger framework explaining the variation between them (§ 4). The paper ends with a summary of a number of further issues which have come to be highlighted in relation to specific types of metaphors, or in relation to particular perspectives on the classification of metaphor types (§ 5).

This study examines the conceptualizations of the negative emotion sadness in Turkish body part idioms. More specifically, it addresses two main problems: (i) distribution of the body part terms used in idioms to express sadness, and (ii) conceptual metaphors and metonymies underlying the body part idioms that express sadness. The data of the study includes the idioms, which contain body part terminologies and communicate sadness. Conceptual metaphors and metonymies were identified following Barcelona (1997) and Kövecses (2000). The findings reveal that the body parts heart (yürek, kalp) and liver/lung (ciğer) are more productive in Turkish for the conceptualization of sadness. Among the conceptual mappings identified, PHYSICAL DAMAGE is the most typical one with the highest number of linguistic items. Turkish data provide insights on the cultural-cognitive model of sadness, as well as on the embodied nature of emotions.

The chapter deals with the metonymic basis of the change of the count-mass property encountered in concrete nouns. The issue is analysed from two perspectives: the Conceptual Metonymy Theory (CMyT) (Dirven and Ruiz de Mendoza 2010:39) and Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1990, 2000, 2008, etc.). Although they both stem fro m the general Cognitive Linguistics movement, each of them approaches the issue differently. The CMyT, being derived from Lako ff and Johnson's Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, Johnson 1980), sees the change of grammatical properties of nouns as one of the cases of semantic extension motivated by conceptual metonymies. Langacker (2000:199), on the other hand, sees metonymy as one of the prevalent processes taking place in language, and provides two types of tools for describing it, i.e. the metonymy-based reference point relationship and construal aspects. Langacker also indicates certain patterns that apply whenever nouns alter their grammat ical property. The chapter concludes with a comparison of both approaches.

Predmet ovog rada je konceptualizacija vremena pomoću ontoloških metafora u srpskom i španskom jeziku. Kognitivnolingvističke
analize konceptualizacije vremena najčešće se usredsređuju na izvorne domene prostora i
kretanja. Naš cilj je da utvrdimo kako govornici srpskog i španskog jezika konceptualizuju vreme pomoću onih
metafora koje se ne zasnivaju prevashodno na orijentaciji u prostoru odnosno kretanju i koje pojmovima iz
domena vremena daju ontološki status. Teorijsko–metodološki okvir istraživanja zasniva se na kognitivnoj lingvistici
i teoriji pojmovne metafore. Korpus za istraživanje čini po hiljadu i petsto primera iz oba jezika, koji su
ekscerpirani iz raznovrsnih izvora. Rezultati analize ukazuju na to da se vreme i u srpskom i u španskom jeziku
može konceptualizovati pomoću više ontoloških metafora. Identifikovane metafore nisu međusobno odeljene, već
su povezane u sistem koji se odlikuje skalom opštosti. Dve najopštije metafore tog sistema, koje imaju svoje dalje
konkretizacije, jesu vreme je resurs i vreme je agens.

Ključne reči: kognitivna lingvistika, konceptualizacija vremena, ontološke metafore, srpski jezik, španski jezik

U ovom se poglavlju osvrćemo na metonimiju u kognitivnolingvističkom pristupu. Nakon napomena o tradicionalnom poimanju metonimije, ukazujemo na ključne teme i pitanja u vezi s metonimijom kojima su se bavila kognitivnolingvistička istraživanja. Počinjemo od promišljanja Georgea Lakoffa i Marka Johnsona (1980) na koja su se nastavila mnoga kasnija istraživanja koja su se bavila referencijalnom metonimijom. Osvrćemo se na načela koja upravljaju metonimijama, te pojašnjavamo konstrukte kojima se u kognitivnolingvističkim istraživanjima opisivalo metonimijske odnose: domene, matrice domena, scenarije, okvire i idealizirane kognitivne modele. Osvrćemo se i na odnos metonimije s metaforom, te na pitanje je li bit metonimijskih odnosa preslikavanje, ili nešto drugo (isticanje domene, njezino proširivanje ili sužavanje). Poglavlje završava osvrtom na metonimiju u vizualnom i multimodalnom izražavanju.

Metonymy and metaphor are fundamental and ubiquitous meaning-generating tropes that operate on a conceptual, not just a verbal, level. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate to scholars outside of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Metonymy paradigm how these two tropes cue meaning verbally, visually, musically, sonically, and multimodally in five Chinese clips promoting Chinese cities and Chinese trade fairs, all produced after, and in the spirit of, president Xi Jinping's "Belt and Road" initiative (2013). We also pay attention to how interpretations are to some extent bound to differ depending on whether the audience does or does not have detailed knowledge of Chinese culture. We end by briefly arguing that a full analysis of the clips-as indeed of most discourses-requires awareness of yet other tropes as well as expertise in other humanities disciplines.

Current research shows that the gap between scientific knowledge and everyday knowledge may impede students' learning of science. The present study aims at investigating the terms denoting the concepts of SPEED and VELOCITY in Arabic and English in terms of meaning, prototypicality, conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy based on Lakoff's (1987) idealized cognitive models (ICMs). The data for analysis was extracted from Arabic and English dictionaries as well as corpora. The results show that Arabic ‫ة‬ َ ‫ع‬ ‫ُرْ‬ ‫س‬ (speed) and English speed overlap and contrast in terms of meaning extension and its motivation, and overlap in prototype, SCALE. The dominance of SCALE in conceptualizing the terms may cause both Arabic and English speakers to confuse speed and velocity if they are not alerted to the difference between their prior knowledge and scientific meanings of the terms. These results have important implications for research in linguistics and science education.

The problem of distinguishing metaphor from metonymy has been puzzling the cognitive linguistic literature for years. In spite of the numerous differences between the two phenomena their similarities and interconnectedness are constantly pointed out and subjected to thorough examinations (Barnden 2010). This paper focuses on figurative expressions which resist a rigid categorization as metaphors or metonymies. I analyze instances of figurative language in three partially concurring theoretical frameworks (Radden 2002, Barcelona 2003, Warren 2002, 2004, 2006) and investigate the descriptive force of these approaches. My aim is to reconstruct how they describe borderline cases and to identify the criteria they have proposed for the distinction
between metaphor and metonymy. My paper does not intend to reach an ultimate solution to the problem of distinction. The objective of my analyses is rather to explore and formulate possible questions a theory should answer if its aim is to distinguish metaphor from metonymy.

This article revisits the notion of indirect speech acts (ISA) in the light of a weak formulation of the classical Literal Force Hypothesis. It is argued that ISAs are actually instances of unspecified illocutions, which allows for the positing of a conventionalization cline in their realization. Under these assumptions, we revise current theories of ISAs and make a number of proposals to overcome their limitations: (1) (Multiple source)-in-target metonymies and illocutionary ICMs are postulated to account for the motivation and rich conceptual fabric of illocutionary categories, respectively; and (2) a more flexible model of illocutionary constructions is sketched in terms of base configurations and specification links in order to explain the multi-faceted nature of illocutionary performance.

Metaphor and Metonymy were studied in terms of literality, figurativity, reversibility, and similarity. Stimuli statements were presented to participants and participants were given possible interpretations [interpretents] to choose from. The findings indicated that Metonymy was essentially reversible, whereas Metaphor was essentially non-reversible. It was also found that Metonymy was more inclined to a literal interpretation than Metaphor. Moreover, it was found that when metaphor was put into reversals it was more inclined to a literal interpretation, whereas metonymy was not. Additionally, it was found that Metonymy was more inclined to a similarity interpretation when in reversals whereas metaphor was not necessarily inclined to a similarity interpretation when in reversals. The paper is followed by an Appendix discussing the set theoretic and logical formulation of the metaphoric and metonymic operations. Metaphor is seen in terms of the exclusive disjunction, where one referent set is defined in terms of another but not the other way around, and metonymy is seen in terms of the inclusive disjunction, where referent sets are co-referentially definable. 

Keywords: metaphor, metonymy, reversibility, literality, similarity, target-source referent sets, co-referentiality, Lacan, Jakobson

The paper examines metonymic linguistic expressions of romantic love in Modern Greek language. The expressions come from a questionnaire about romantic love, a methodological tool which is not used in cognitive linguistics. The qualitative analysis of the data is based on previous studies in cognitive linguistics and confirms the presence of metonymy in emotional talk. The analysis also reveals the neuro-logical basis of the metonymic expressions and their specific-predicative-use and role in the specific context in which they occur.

Published in: Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter, Bd. 17 (2014), 1-26.
Cassirer proclaimed the human as ʻanimal symbolicum’. Language, art and religion are manifestations of an poetic and symbol-creating awareness. The poetic terms are caused by a movement which is to be characterized as tropical. A poetic term can be generated as a metonymic term, based on the principle of contiguity, but also as an metaphoric term, corresponding to the principle of similarity. The perception of these tropical movements draws the attention to the origination of a poetic term as well as to the changes of already existing terms. The history of the ancient symbolic speech is a history of permanent creations, but also of mutations of meaning. This history is noticeable in Homer in Greece for the first time in Homer. His figurative speech is influenced by the mythical contiguity, which yields to a metaphorization and allegorization of the symbols in lyrics and philosophy in the following period, but still remains present in the religious literature. Finally the symbolic speech of the new Christianity is situated in the non-solvable tension between the principles of contiguity and similarity. A recognition of this history of the ancient symbolic speech is required for its subsequent analysis, which is especially important for Christianity, for whom the ancient symbolism is normative, as well as for the philosophy, which desires to recognize its own history.

This study represents a contrastive analysis of Michael Ende's poem "Der Lindwurm und der Schmetterling oder Der seltsame Tausch" and its Serbian translation by Spomenka Krajčević titled "Zmaj i Leptir ili Neobična zamena" based on the cognitive-linguistic theory of conceptual metonymy. The purpose of the analysis is to determine in what way the mechanisms of conceptual metonymy may be utilized for the purposes of poetry translation. For this reason, those passages of the translated poem will be analyzed which deviate from the original in such a way that the semantic material of the deviating passages exhibits the characteristics of metonymy, namely a specific conceptual configuration between an Idealized Cognitive Model (Frame) and its parts. The analysis revealed 61 metonymic relationships between the target- and the source text, of which 46 in total (75.4 %) reveal a contiguous relationship between two parts of an ICM, indicating that this metonymic principle of configuration may present a considerably more flexible translation strategy for poetry translation than the substitution of an entire ICM with one of its parts or vice versa.

Filozofski fakultet Univerziteta u Tuzli izvorni naučni rad  U radu se analizira uloga konceptualne metafore i konceptualne integracije u poetskom diskursu pjesme ˝Gradačac˝ bosanskohercegovačkog autora Milorada Pejića. Analiza se fokusira na inovativne jezične izraze, a stihovima se pristupa s kognitivno-lingvističkog i književno-interpretacijskog aspekta. Utvrđuju se i opisuju kognitivni mehanizmi na kojima se slikovite metafore temelje. Interpretacija proniče kulturalnu uslovljenost metaforičkih koncepata i slikovitih izraza kao njihovih ekstenzija, prati rekonfiguracije koncepata tokom povijesti te njihovo poimanje danas s aspekta kognitivne lingvistike, književne kreacije/interpretacije i opće zbilje. Analiza primjera utvrdila je dva temeljna metaforična koncepta: KONTROLA JE GORE I RIZIK JE U PARTERU koji pripadaju tzv. orijentacijskim metaforama, te koncepte: VAŽNO JE VELIKO, VAŽNOST/STATUS JE VISOKO, TEORIJE SU ZGRADE, DOBRO JE BIJELO/SJAJNO I LOŠE JE TAMNO/CRNO. Analizom se došlo i do inverzije konceptualnoga modela dobro je gore u loše je gore, što je ovjereno u širem kontekstu i povijesnoj zbilji kao ovaploćenje Lakoff-Johnsonove teze po kojoj istina nije datost nego razumijevanje. Upravo je metafora, zahvaljujući mehanizmu konceptualne integracije, djelotvorno oruđe razumijevanja. Zaključno, analiza je pokazala ukorijenjenost inovativnog poetskog diskursa Pejićeve pjesme u kognitivnim, kulturnim i povijesnim

Previous literature on the classification of metonymy has mainly concentrated on the relationship between source and target (e.g. Radden & Kövecses 1999, Peirsman & Geeraerts 2006a). More recent, pragmatically oriented classifications are concerned with the role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction, i.e. at which level of meaning construction a certain metonymy is applied as an inferential tool (e.g. Thornburg & Panther 1997, Panther & Thornburg 1999). At the heart of these latter approaches is the assumption that conceptual metonymy cannot be reduced to acts of reference. Interestingly enough, no classification of metonymy has been suggested which concentrates on the type of the mental content participating in the metonymic process. In this paper I outline such a content-based approach. According to the type of the target content the following classes of metonymy can
be set up: THING-, EVENT-, PROPERTY-, PROPOSITION- and speech act metonymies, which can be further subdivided based on the type of the source content. Furthermore, I argue that my content-based approach is compatible with and complementary to earlier contiguity-based and pragmatic classifications, since certain contiguity relations between source and target and certain pragmatic functions of metonymy are closely related to the type of the mental content targeted by the source content. Future investigations integrating these three aspects of metonymy may contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

Keywords: metonymy, classification of metonymy, reference, reference point, mental access, conceptual content, metonymic inference

Lo scopo della mia tesi magistrale in Approcci Cognitivi al Lessico è stato quello di analizzare la semantica di alcune delle neoformazioni derivazionali e composizionali su base ''covid'' dell'italiano (covid-free; pre-covid; post-covid; ex-covid; no-covid), emerse dalla comunicazione sulla pandemia da COv-Sars-2. Ho fatto riferimento alla teoria della Metonimia Concettuale e alla nozione di Modello Cognitivo Idealizzato (MCI) della Linguistica Cognitiva, alle regole di formazione delle nuove parole in italiano e alla produttività dei prefissi coinvolti nel processo di derivazione. Ho adottato un approccio usage-based 'basato sull'uso', conformemente a uno dei principali postulati di tale paradigma: ho costruito, perciò, un corpus e analizzato 729 occorrenze per delineare la semantica dei suddetti neologismi.
La mia ricerca rileva una complessa polisemia sia della base lessicale ''covid'' sia delle intere neoformazioni.

After a brief explanation of the principles of suffixal word formation understood in terms of (conceptual) metonymic processes, the paper aims to present the results of the analysis of 150 words collected randomly from European Spanish texts, as a result of which 42 suffixes, 36 metonymy patterns, and 11 word class patterns forming 77 metonymic types were documented. Furthermore, these data are compared with the results of a previous study based on all the examples of word formation by suffixation included in Nueva gramática de la lengua española. This first attempt to study derived words extracted from real texts and to compare them with the previous “grammar” study allows us to draw some interesting conclusions regarding the cognitive processes ruling Spanish suffixal derivation.

In cognitive linguistics, spatialization of abstract concepts has been extensively studied in grammar and lexicon, forming one of the crucial assumptions on the spatial foundations of language (Johnson 1987; Langacker 1987; Lakoff 1987; Heine 1997). In Conceptual Metaphor Theory this issue has been commonly addressed on the basis of linguistic data alone (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Kövecses 2000). In this paper, taking a multimodal approach to metaphor (Müller 2008a; Cienki and Müller 2008; Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009; Górska 2010, 2014a), I will focus on spatialization of abstract concepts (such as HAPPINESS, LOVE, WISDOM and STUPIDITY) in cartoons by means of metaphors that evoke an image schema or an image schema complex as their source domain and whose function is to highlight some aspect or aspects of these abstract concepts. The cartoons selected for this study are all by Janusz Kapusta (2014), a Polish artist. It is argued that they are a valuable source of insights into the relationship between space, cognition and language. The study provides supportive evidence for the claim that spatialization of abstract ideas in the visual medium may be independent from how such ideas are expressed verbally. This finding corroborates the results of gesture studies (Cienki and Müller 2008; Mittelberg 2010; Müller et al. 2013; Müller 2017), strengthening the view that metaphor, as a conceptual mechanism, has its manifestations not only in the verbal mode, but also in other modalities. Since the cartoons also rely on the verbal medium, they offer additional insights into multimodal representations of abstracts concepts, and the dynamic activation of metaphoricity.

A cross-linguistic comparison of the patterns of use of metonymic expressions of the CAPITAL FOR GOVERNMENT type uncovers significant cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences in the sense of the underuse of some possibilities, although metonymic mappings are in theory available. The odd patterns of the use of this metonymy type in Croatian are shown to be motivated by a metaphorical scale of closeness with respect to the deictic centre or ego, ranging from indifferents to metonymic friends and foes to the ego. The scale in question is itself based on a variant of the conceptual metaphor EMOTIONAL DISTANCE IS DISTANCE IN PHYSICAL SPACE.

It is traditionally assumed that metonymy plays hardly any role outside the lexicon, and is thus largely irrelevant to grammar. The present paper attempts to show the contrary: that metonymy has a series of long-ranging ramifications in the grammatical system. By specifically considering the role of metonymy in motivating certain phenomena in the English TENSE-ASPECT-MOOD (TAM) system, the paper demonstrates that the metonymic operations at play in this system form an orderly and internally coherent system.

With the advent of the "multimodal turn" in metaphor research (Forceville 1996, Cienki 1998), it has become evident that the PATH schema (Johnson 1987), either alone or as a part of an image schema complex (Cienki 1997), is commonly evoked to provide structuring for metaphorical rendering of abstract concepts in multimodal discourse, including verbo-gestural communication (Kolter et al. 2012) and verbo-visuals, such as advertisements (Yu 2009), comics (Potsch and Williams 2012), documentaries (Forceville 2006, 2011), and animation films (Forceville and Jeulink 2011; Forceville 2013a, b, 2016). Revealing that metaphor, as a conceptual mechanism, has its manifestations not only in the verbal mode, but also in other modalities, studies of this kind break the circular "language-thought-language" argumentation that was common in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999) and, eventually, has become the object of both criticism and common concern (Gibbs and Colston 1995).
In this case study I focus on the PATH schema in verbo-pictorial aphorisms on LIFE, taking as my data sample a number of cartoons by Janusz Kapusta, a Polish artist. The analysed verbo-pictorial aphorisms are all based on conventional metaphors, and their creative reworking in either one mode or the two modes in combination, accounts for their novelty and makes the communicative acts more memorable. In more general terms, this study provides further support to the dynamic theory of metaphor (Müller 2008), since it makes it apparent that the degree of overlap of the elements cued in the two modes varies considerably and, by the same token, activation levels of metaphoric source and target domains turn out to be gradable and dynamic. It is argued also that the novelty of the mapping should be included among the factors that may increase the metaphor's activation level.