metonymy def,comparison,and examples

7/24/2019 Metonymy Def,Comparison,And Examples

1/23

Part 2: Motivation in language 54

5. Metonymy as a motivating factor in language

5.1. Defining metonymy (in contrast with metaphor)

Metonymy as a stand.for relationship based on contiguity

Activity 5.1. Which expressions in the song below are not used literally?

Wednesday Morning, 3 AM (Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel)

I can hear the soft breathingOf the girl that I love,As she lies here beside meAsleep with the night,And her hair, in a fine mist

Floats on my pillow,Reflecting the glowOf the winter moonlight.

She is soft, she is warm,But my heart remains heavy,And I watch as her breastsGently rise, gently fall,For I know with the first light of dawnIll be leaving,And tonight will beAll I have left to recall.

Oh, what have I done,Why have I done it,Ive committed a crime,Ive broken the law.For twenty-five dollarsAnd pieces of silver,I held up and robbedA hard liquor store.

My life seems unreal,My crime an illusion,A scene badly writtenIn which I must play.Yet I know as I gazeAt my young love beside me,The morning is just a few hours away.


2/23

Unit 4: Metonymy as a motivating factor 55

(From: Radden, Cognitive English Grammar, 2007)

metonymy is traditionally approached as a stand-for relationship that is, unlike meta-phor, not based on similarity but on contiguity or proximity.

contiguity is taken in its broader sense to cover all associative relations except simi-larity.

this means that metonyms are expressions that are used instead of some other expres-sions because the latter are associated with or suggested by the former:

(1) a. The White Housedeclined to comment on the issue.b. Keep your eyeon the ball!c. He was testifying on theHillearlier in the week.d. He emigrated toAmericain 1969.


synecdoche is a figure of speech that is sometimes distinguished from metonymy

in this case, an expression referring to a part is used to refer to some larger whole,e.g.:

(2) At this point stringstake over.


3/23


(3) The kettles boiling.

(4) One of those singled out for merciless treatment was Alexander Slepinin, nicknamedthe Colonel, a three-hundred-pound, six-foot-five black beltwho claimed to haveserved with the Russian Special Forces in Afghanistan.

(5) No, naprvi reketrjeava pitanje osvajaa drugog seta u 5. gemu.

the notion of contiguity is taken in its broadest sense to cover all associative relationsexcept similarity, and may thus be too vague a notion, making metonymy almost acognitive wastebasket

Panther and Thornburg (2002: 282) attempt to constrain the scope of metonymy bysubmitting that the relation between the metonymic source and the target is contin-gent, i.e. it does not exist by conceptual necessity, thus when a nurse, for example,refers to a patient as the ulcer in room 506, it is not conceptually necessary for theulcer to belong to the patient in room 506

metonymic relation is thus in principle defeasible or cancellable, because the sourceconcept is still usually retrievable (though backgrounded), even if the target conceptis conventionalized in the lexicon

The number of domains involved (inter-domain vs intra-domain mappings)

an important point of difference between metaphor and metonymy observed by cog-nitive linguists has to do with whether the mapping takes place across distinct con-ceptual domains or within a single domain (or ICM= idealized cognitive model, also

called script, scenario, or frame in cognitive linguistic literature) the standard view is that a metonymic mapping occurs within a single domain, while

metaphoric mappings take place across two discrete domains

the differences between the two types of mappings can be presented schematically asfollows:

metaphorical mapping metonymic mapping

Figure 1. Metaphor and metonymy distinguished on the basis of the number of con-ceptual domains involved


4/23



however, in the case of metonymy, it is important to bear in mind that the single con-ceptual domain involved is structured by an ICM(Lakoff 1987: 288) and may exhibitsome internal complexity

it is thus possible, as Croft (1993: 348) points out, for metonymic mapping to occurwithin a single domain matrix which involves a number of subdomains

in other words, metonymic mapping across different domains within a single domainmatrix, involving the conceptual effect of domain highlighting, is also possible

The direction and the number of mappings

as for the directionality of the two types of mappings, metaphors typically employ amore concrete concept or domain as source in order to structure a more abstract con-cept or domain as target. In the majority of cases, elements from the physical worldare mapped onto the social and mental world

metaphorical mappings are normally unidirectional, and the source and target are not

reversible (cf. Kvecses 2002: 6)


5/23


this is often referred as the Unidirectionality Hypothesis

the situation with metonymies is quite different, metonymic mappings can proceed ineither direction, from the more concrete part of the domain (subdomain) to the moreabstract one and the other way round

according to Radden and Kvecses (1999: 22),

[i]n principle, either of the two conceptual entities related may stand for the other,i.e., unlike metaphor, metonymy is basically a reversible process.

this is quite obvious when we consider pairs of metonymies such as CAUSE-FOR-EFFECT(e.g. healthy complexionfor the good state of health bringing about the ffectof healthy complexion) and EFFECT-FOR-CAUSE (e.g.slow road for slow traffic re-sulting from the poor state of the road), GENERIC-FOR-SPECIFIC (the pill) andSPECIFIC-FOR-GENERIC (aspirin), etc.

this means that Figure 1 could be modified in such a way that the mappings go theother way (but of course not at the same time)

metaphors may work on the basis of a set of correspondences (though some may ex-ploit only one), while metonymic mappings are based on a single correspondence (cf.Ruiz de Mendoza and Pea 2002)

the differences between the two types of mappings can now be presented schemati-cally as follows:

metaphorical mappings metonymic mappingFigure 2. Metaphor and metonymy distinguished on the basis of the number of con-

ceptual mappings (correspondences) involved

Different functions of metaphor and metonymy?

metaphor and metonymy are said to have different functions

according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 36f) metaphor is principally a way of con-ceiving of one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is understanding;while metonymy has primarily a referential function, that is, it allows us to use oneentity to stand for another

this difference is typically reflected in their realizations


6/23


metaphors often function as predicative expressions (with an explicit or implicit ver-bal element), whereas metonymies function as nominal expressions, most commonlyfunctioning as subjects and objects

both metaphor and metonymy involve a certain amount of inferential work (recallthat metaphors are often informally considered to be shortened similes, i.e. two enti-

ties are brought into correlation as exhibiting some similarity, but there are no func-tion words that would make this comparison explicit): something is described bymentioning another thing with which it is assumed to implicitly share some features

hat is meant by inferential work boils down to the following: some points of similar-ity may be easier to establish, i.e. some correspondences will be easier to make, butsome such correspondences require more intellectual effort on the part of thespeaker/hearer, of course keeping in mind the Invariance Hypothesis and the con-straints it imposes, but when a number of such correspondences are established, thetarget domain may appear in a fairly new light

this is why metaphor is often considered as making possible a new way of seeingthings, and thus of understanding them

what is more, a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects ofthe concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 10)

the metaphorical structuring is always partial and never complete, because if it werecomplete one concept would actually be the other, and not just be understood interms of the other concept. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 13)

as for the nature of the metonymic mapping, Kvecses and Radden (1998: 39) aptlynote that it is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, pro-vides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same domain,or ICM [Idealized Cognitive Model]

one of the most important aspects of this definition is that metonymy provides mental

access to a conceptual entity that need not be otherwise readily and easily accessible figuratively speaking, metonymy is an efficient mental shortcut making it possible

for us to refer to entities for which there are not current or convenient (in the sense ofbeing short and compact) linguistic expressions

some examples such:

(6) a. The Kremlinhas officially anointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the offi-cial successor to Boris Yeltsin, and the war in Chechnya should ensure hisvictory in the presidential election in June 2000.

b. He flew to Amsterdam expecting the IKEA reps to be corporate suits,

c. Activists were emboldened by Seattle, and are no longer wary of taking oncomplex industries.

because the Kremlin is the area in Moscow in which government buildings are con-centrated, it has been traditionally used to refer metonymically to the centre of politi-cal power in the former USSR and Russia

in the second example, exhibiting OBJECT-FOR-USER-OF-THE-OBJECTmetonymy (cf.Lakoff and Johnson 1980), which is a very common subtype of a more general PART-FOR-WHOLEmetonymy, the property of wearing a certain type of suits is such a sali-


7/23


ent feature of businessmen that it almost functions as a stereotype identifying thetype of people who would wear them

the conceptual domain within which the mapping takes place is explicitly named inthe nominal expressionIKEA reps

in (6) c., we have what Radden and Kvecses (1999: 41f) call PLACE-FOR-EVENTme-

tonymy based on a Location ICM: the complex package of encyclopaedic knowl-edge, viz. the events both at and around one of the meetings of the worlds most in-fluential businessmen and politicians that took place in Seattle in 1999, and espe-cially the violent demonstrations against globalization, is compressed by means ofmetonymy into a single proper noun

while Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 36f) see metonymy as having primarily referentialfunction they are aware of its additional functions

they point out not only that metonymy is naturally suited for focussing (Lakoff andJohnson 1980: 37ff), but that it can just like metaphor have a role in construal, inother words in making it possible for us to see and understand things in alternativeways:

But metonymy is not merely a referential device. It also serves the functionof providing understanding. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 36)

metonymy is often used for understanding in a slightly different sense, i.e. not somuch for highlighting as in a more radical sense of providing a conceptual handle orwindow on a concept that would be otherwise quite difficult to conceptualize andlexicalize

a fairly drastic example of this comes from the special language of the military,where according to Oxford English Dictionary one of the (now obsolete) meanings

of horseis:

(7) 3.Mil.A horse and his rider; hence a cavalry soldier.a. In sing., with pl. horses. Obs.rare.1548 HALL Chron., Edw. IV 231 The Duke..came in no small hast.. onely ac-compaignied with sixtene horses. Ibid., Hen. VIII 32 The kyng contynuallysent foorth his light horses to seke the country.

b. Collective pl. horse: Horse soldiers, cavalry. light horse: see quot. 1853, andLIGHT-HORSE.1548 HALL Chron., Hen. IV 13 King Henry..with a fewe horse in the night,came to the Tower of London. 1549 Compl. Scot. xi. 89 He furnest..tua hun-

dretht lycht horse. 1597 SHAKES. 2 Hen. IV, II. i. 186 Fifteene hundred Foot,fiue hundred Horse Are march'd vp. 1698Lond. Gaz.No. 3445/1 First marchedan Alai Beg with about 50 Horse. 1777 ROBERTSON Hist. Amer. (1783) I.157 The body..consisted only of two hundred foot, twenty horse, andtwenty..Indians. 1853 STOCQUELER Milit. Encycl.,Light horse, all mountedsoldiers that are lightly armed and accoutred, for active and desultory service.Thus light dragoons, fencible cavalry, mounted yeomanry, etc. are, strictlyspeaking, light horse.

however, there are many less exotic examples where the presence of a metonymy ishardly ever noticed, cf. the following set of examples we have descriptions of a per-

son placing a candle on a table:


8/23


(8) a. Magdalen lit a candle. What notice must I give you, she asked, as she putthe candleon the table, before I leave?

b. Can I put the candleon the table? Will you light it up for me?c. She put the candleon the table, and taking her head between her hands sat

down to think.

according to standard dictionary definitions, candle is a source of artificial light madeof wax, tallow or similar solid fat formed in a cylindrical shape around a wick of cot-ton or flax

dictionary definitions do not mention not any candle stick or candle holder as part ofa candle, i.e. they do not record any metonymic uses of the PART-FOR-WHOLE type,where candle would refer to the whole of the functional unit consisting of a candleand its holder

note that the above examples could be actually interpreted as being about a candlewithout any holder, but it is more likely that both a candle and a holder are involved

in the latter case, we then have a PART-FOR-WHOLEmetonymy that goes virtually un-noticed because it is subconscious, but is very useful indeed

there is simply no ready-made label for the functional unit consisting of two parts,and specifying the parts of the unit, say by means of a coordinating construction, onevery occasion we mean the unit would be too cumbersome and perhaps make thespeaker and the listener aware of the existence of the functional unit in conceptualterms, i.e. raising their consciousness, which might be a side-effect of the lexicaliza-tion, would certainly place additional burden, however small, on working memoryresources and slow down online processing, and possibly other cognitive processesthat might be running.

5.2. Types of metonymy

a number of typologies of metonymies were proposed in the past

Ullmann (1962: 218f) thus classifies metonymies according to the associations un-derlying them

some metonymies are based on spatialrelations, some on temporal ones, and amongother relations which result in metonymic change, there is also pars pro toto orpart

for whole type

several recent significant contributions to a cognitively based typology of metony-

mies, such as Kvecses and Radden (1998), Radden and Kvecses (1999), Pantherand Thornburg (1999: 335f), Seto (1999), and Blank (1999)

a crucial aspect of the cognitive linguistic approach to metonymy is that the phe-nomenon is not reduced to just one type of mapping, i.e. to the whole for part map-

ping

it also subsumes the traditional synecdoche, i.e. part for whole mapping, and includesa third mapping where part stands for another part within the same domain or Ideal-ized Cognitive Model

according to Ken-ichi Seto (1999:98), there are different kinds of metonymy,

depending not only on the kinds of entities (spatial, temporal and abstract), but also


9/23


on the types of reference, i.e., the way one entity refers to another (whole-part,container-contents, process-result, etc.)

spatial entities are understood in the sense of physical entities which have spatialextention

there are two major subtypes: the whole-part (e.g. He picked up thetelephone,meaning the receiver) and the container-content type, which is different from thewhole-part type, because the container does not refer to the container plus thecontents, but only to the contents as far as the reference is concerned. (e.g. Thekettleis boiling, where the kettle can refer to the water in it, or the content of the kettle.)

however, examples likeI had to go to the underground streets to find a vacantmeter,will resist a neat classification: vacant modifies the parking space next to the spaceadjacent to it, between the meter and the space is neither a whole-part nor acontainer-contents relation, but a relation characterized by the spatial contiguity

between the two entities

temporal entities are divided into two categories: one is based on the relation

between a whole event and a subevent and the other on the relation between apreceding and an ensuing situation

e.g. in He is reading for the first degree, reading is a part of studying, which issupposed to be part of being a university student, and is therefore a subevent for thewhole event of "being an undergraduate student")

the preceding-ensuing type of metonymy is processual

e.g. inI feel fiercly proud of my mother forstanding upfor her righteous neighbourthe preceding event of standing up, which means "rising to an upright posture" isoften a prerequisite for doing some activity, therefore, standing up metonimicallyimplies that the mother did something positive for her righteous neighbours

abstract entitiesare typically salient properties of a thing

although there are some properties perceptually so vivid that it may hardly seem rightto call them abstract, they can however become abstract in the sense that they are not

bounded by either space or time. (e.g. She was considered a great beauty in heryouth

Ungerer and Schmid (1996:115) imply that metonymy involves a relation of a wordand its figurative counterpart and based on that differentiate among several types ofcontiguity-relations in metonymies:

PART FOR WHOLE(allhandson deck)

WHOLE FOR

PART

(to fill upthe car)


10/23


CONTAINER FOR CONTENT (I'll have aglass)MATERIAL FOR OBJECT(aglass, an iron)PRODUCER FOR PRODUCT(buy aFord)PLACE FOR INSTITUTION(talks between WashingtonandMoscow)PLACE FOR EVENT (Watergatechanged our politics)

CONTROLLED FOR CONTROLLER(the busesare on strike)CAUSE FOR EFFECT (his native tongue is German)

Radden and Kvecses (1999: 28) talk about the interaction of ontological realms andmetonymy

according to them, metonymy may occur wherever we have idealized cognitivemodels (ICMs)

as a matter of fact, we have ICMs of everything that is conceptualized, which in-cludes the conceptualization of things and events, word forms and their meanings,and things and events in the real world

they refer to these types of conceptualization as ontological realms

ICMs may also interrelate ontological realms

Radden and Kvecses (1999) distinguish three ontological realms:o the world of concepts,o the world of forms (of language) ando the world of things and events

the interrelation between entities from the same realm or from different ontologicalrealms lead to various ICMs and possibilities for metonymy

however, we have to differentiate between ICMs which interrelate entities of differ-ent ontological realms within the same semiotic unit and ICMs which interrelate enti-ties of different semiotic units within the same ontological realm or realms

in other words, there are sign metonymies, reference metonymies, and concept me-

tonymies the situation of interrelated ontological realms gives rise to two ICMs:

o Sign ICM, (1) which can be described as pairing of a concept and a form, ando Reference ICM (2-4), which is a pairing of a thing or event and a sign, form or

concept

theSign ICMunites a form and one or more concepts

the form metonymically stands for the concept it denotes

since we have no other means of expressing and communicating our concepts thanby using forms, language as well as other communication systems are of necessitymetonymic, e.g. (1)FORM FOR CONCEPT:dollar for "money"


11/23


the Sign ICM leads only to form for concept metonymy, not to the reverse metonymyof concept for form

the situation of interrelated semiotic units involves concepts in conjunction withforms and we refer to these ICMs as Concept ICMs (5)

as the picture shows, there are three types of Reference ICMs and possible

metonymies the situation of reference involves signs, i.e., the form-concept units, which stand for

a thing or event referred too FORM-CONCEPT FOR THING/EVENT: word cow for a real cowo CONCEPT FOR THING/EVENT: concept "cow" for a real cowo FORM FOR THING/EVENT:word-form cow for a real cow

concept metonymies involve a shift from ConceptA to ConceptB, which may beaccompanied by a shift in formo FORM-CONCEPTA FOR FORMB-CONCEPTB: bus-"bus" for bus drivers-"bus

drivers" (This type involves the relationship between two form-concept pairings:the word-form and its associated concept, buses, is used in place of anotherconventional form-concept unit, bus drivers.)

o FORM-CONCEPTA FOR CONCEPTB: mother "mother" for "housewife-mother"

o FORMA-CONCEPTA FOR FORMA-CONCEPTB: White House-"place" forWhite House-"institution" (This metonymic situation applies to polysemy, inwhich two senses of a word-form are relatable within the same ICM)

o FORMA-CONCEPTA FOR FORMB-CONCEPTA: UN for United Nations (inthis metonymic situation the form of an expression changes while the conceptroughly stays the same. This metonymy applies to reductions of form such as

abbreviations, acronyms, clippings and so on).

since our knowledge about the world is organized by structured ICMs which we per-ceive in terms of wholes with parts, the difference between the wholes and parts is ofgreat importance for metonymic processes

Radden and Kvecses list the types of metonymy-producing relationships under twogeneral conceptual configurations:(i) whole ICM and its part(s); this configuration gives rise to metonymies in which

we access a part of an ICM via its whole or a whole ICM via one of its parts(ii) parts of an ICM which may lead to metonymies in which we access a part via

another part of an ICM (the whole ICM is still implicitly present in the back-

ground) within both types there are numerous subtypes according to the type of ICM

the whole ICM and its part(s) configuration may involveo Thing-and-Part ICM,o Scale ICM,o the Constitution ICM,o the Event ICM, etc.

the parts of an ICM configuration may involveo Action ICM,o Perception ICM,o Causation ICM,o

Production ICM,


12/23


o Location ICM, etc.

practically all of these can come in further more specific subtypes, depending onwhich parts of the ICM are involved

e.g. Thing-and-Part ICM may lead to two metonymic variants, WHOLE THING FOR APART OF THE THING(Americafor United States), and the PART OF A THING FOR THE

WHOLE THING(Englandfor Great Britain)

pragmatic typology of metonymies (Panther and Thornburg 1999: 335f)

propositional metonymyoreferential metonymyopredicational metonymy

illocutionary metonymy

within the framework of a pragmatic typology of metonymies proposed in Pantherand Thornburg (1999: 335f), expressions like the ones highlighted in (9-10) are char-acterized as instances of propositional metonymy

propositional metonymies come in two subtypes: in a referential metonymy, exem-plified in (9), one referring expression, usually a noun phrase, is the vehicle for animplied target that is also a referring expression normally realized as a noun phrase;in a predicational metonymy, illustrated in (10) below, one propositional contentstands for another propositional content

the third type of discourse-pragmatic metonymy, extensively discussed in Thornburgand Panther (1997) and Panther and Thornburg (1998), is illocutionary metonymywhere one illocutionary act stands for another illocutionary act, as in (11)

(9) a. Most successful is the Guggenheim, which operates flourishing satellites inVenice, Berlin and, most recently, Bilbao, Spain. That branch, which

opened in 1997, has proved highly lucrative, both for the Guggenheim andfor Spain. In addition to spending $100 million to build the museum, theBasque regional government paid the Guggenheim a one-time fee of $20million and subsidizes the Bilbaos$ 12 million annual budget. But the re-turns on that investment have been substantial; in the 18 months since the

Bilbaoopened, tourism in the Basque region has increased by 28 percent.

b. Only one in eight M.P. is Westminsteris a woman, but this is because Brit-ish antidiscrimination laws bar the party from stacking its lists of parliamen-tary candidates in womens favor.

(10) a. Well, look, I mean, abortion is an issue where Governor Bush has beenpretty clear.

b. My first concern in attacking a town garden is to be quite clear as tothe re-sult I am after.

c. Karolyi, whose Belanese riffs on the English language can be unfathomable,was clear about the benefits of a more uniform training approach and amore homogenized national style, as in champion Romania.

(11) a. If I may be allowed a topical rugby metaphor, we had, so to speak lined upthe ball for a conversion.


13/23


b. The trouble with cricket bats, if I may be allowed a brief digression, is thatthey are really only good for swatting.

c. The records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them,they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if I may be

pardoned the barbarous expression, that is, they are face to face presenta-tions of what seems immediately to exist.

Activity 5.2. Read carefully the following paragraphs and try to spot all the various me-tonymies in it. Comment on the type of mapping and the domains involved.

Sen. Robert Byrd is now calling for a road map out of Iraq and mournfully alludes tothe echoes of Vietnam. Another liberal warhorse has weighed in, too. Iraq is GeorgeBushs Vietnam, said Sen. Edward Kennedy. Iraq has developed into a quagmire.Measured objectively, the comparison to Vietnam is something of a stretch. That wardragged on for more than a decade and cost 50,000 lives. There were times during the

Vietnam War when America was losing 500 men a week. A year in, the death total inIraq stands at 458 soldiers killed in action. In some ways, a more accurate analogymight be to Lebanon, where Israel plunged into a power vacuum of feuding religiousfactions during the 1980s and was trapped in a hellhole of bombings and kidnappings.Last week Islamic extremists in Iraq began hijacking foreign civilians, including threeJapanese, and appeared to capture and hold hostage several American contractors. Bushcould face a full-fledged hostage crisisand confront the sort of dilemma Jimmy Carterdid in Iran in 1980.

And yet to most Americans, Vietnam is the recurring nightmare. To anyone over the ageof about 50, last week felt a little like the end of February 1968, when the Tet offensive

was raging through the cities of South Vietnam and Americans were starting to wonderif the war would ever end. A year after Iraqi civilians (with the help of U.S. Marines)toppled Saddams statue, America suffered through its worst week of combat since thesupposed end of the war, with more than 40 soldiers dead and hundreds more wounded.During Tet, a Viet Cong suicide squad penetrated the American Embassy in Saigon be-fore being gunned down. Nothing quite that dramatic happened in Baghdad. Yet PaulBremer, the American proconsul, had to cancel an appointment on the edge of the so-called Green Zone, where the Americans are headquartered, when security forces foundan unexploded bomb possibly waiting for his arrival.

Though Senator Byrd got a little carried away with his prediction that Iraq would turninto a debacle of epic proportions (he recited The Charge of the Light Brigade on theSenate floor), and Senator Kennedy is, well, Senator Kennedy, there are, indeed, un-comfortable echoes of Vietnam in Iraq. So far they are heard mostly by the chatteringclasses. One significant difference between now and thenno drafthas kept downdissent in the heartland. Even so, it is possible to lay Iraq and Vietnam side by side andsee disturbing parallels, as well as critical differencesboth of which shed light onwhat must be done going forward.

For all the tremendous reforms by the military since Vietnam, the battlefield challengesare eerily similar. The generals are still torn between winning hearts and minds withsoccer games and reconstruction projectsand going in hammer-and-tongs to obliteratethe enemy. The experience of the Marines is illustrative. For most of the occupation in

Iraq, the Marines regarded the U.S. Army as too heavy-handed. With its emphasis on


14/23


heavy armor, the Army liked to stand back and bombard the enemy from afar with artil-lery and tanks. The Marines, by contrast, preferred to go in lightto make friendswhile patrolling the streets, even taking off the dark glasses that many Arabs find offen-sive.

The leathernecks are now finding, however, that the desert can be as deadly and confus-

ing as the jungle. Because the Marines sent most of their tanks home, they found them-selves badly missing their armor when Fallujah blew up last week (and even had to suf-fer the indignity of asking the Army to loan a few tanks). When Marines came underfire from a mosque, they had to call in an airstrike. A 500-pound bomb dropped from a

jet, even a satellite-guided smart bomb, is a blunter instrument than a tank shell. Arab-language TV claimed that the bomb killed more than a score of civilians at prayer (aclaim rejected by a Marine spokesman).

5.3. Metonymy and motivation in grammar

MANNER-FOR-ACTIVITYmetonymy

while both metaphor and metonymy are recognized in cognitive linguistics as basicprocesses, it is remarkable that they have been seen as playing very different roles inthe organization of the grammatical component

metaphorical extensions are extensively assumed to have taken place in almost allareas of grammar, making it possible to account for scores of phenomena in an intui-tively appealing way

it has often been noted that, unlike metaphor, metonymy has hardly any impact ongrammar. This type of claim has almost invariably been made on the basis of a dis-cussion of referential or nominal metonymies (cf. Nunberg 1979, 1995, Copestakeand Briscoe 1995). There are two problems with such claims

firstly, it is not immediately clear what is meant by impact on grammar, or bygrammatical corollaries, as Copestake and Briscoe (1995: 16) put it

secondly, while it is true that linguists have so far paid much less attention to meton-ymy than to metaphor in general, a shift in the focus of interest, or at least a first steptowards establishing a sort of balance between these two programmes of cognitiveresearch in terms of awareness, the energy invested, and the breadth and depth of re-search efforts, has recently become noticeable, chiefly towards the end of 1990s(there is by now a rapidly growing body of literature that convincingly shows that

metonymic processes are crucially involved in shaping central areas of grammar, e.g.Panther and Thornburg (1999, 2000, forthcoming), as well as to works by Ruiz deMendoza and his collaborators (Ruiz de Mendoza 1999, Ruiz de Mendoza and PeaCervel 2002, Ruiz de Mendoza and Prez Hernndez 2001), Barcelona (2004), andRadden and Dirven (2007))

metonymy need not in fact bring about any spectacular changes or shifts in grammar,but may still play an important role in motivating whole grammatical subsystems, i.e.in motivating the distribution of elements and their division of labour, e.g. a numberof nominal expressions are ambivalent regarding whether their referents are to beconstrued as uniplex/unitary or multiplex entities

the grammatical import of metonymies is indeed often less than genuinely spectacu-

lar


15/23


it is rather the case that metonymy manifests itself in the nitty-gritty grammatical de-tails, as shown by the following series of examples

constraints on referential metonymy seem at first sight to be less heavily grammaticalin nature than those observed with predicational metonymy

however, this does not mean at all that referential metonymies are totally uninterest-ing from a grammatical point of view

cf. the following examples from the screenplay of Annie Hall by Woody Allen:

(12) Theres Henry Drucker. He has a chairin history at Princeton.

Oh, the short man is Hershel Kaminsky. He has a chairin philosophy at Cor-

nell.

here the referring expression chair is used to substitute for another referring expres-

sion, something like the position of being in charge of a university department it is a lexicalized metonymy since its meaning has become conventionalized and is

part of the mental lexicon of a sizeable number of native speakers of English (and istherefore recorded in most dictionaries of English)

the etymology of the word and the source of the metonymic relationship, ultimatelyderiving from Latin cathedra, are actually lost on many people using it

the lexical item chairis used in its literal sense to refer to an article of household fur-niture, i.e. a movable four-legged seat with a rest for the back

the word entered the language around 1300, judging from the first written recordscited in Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

according to the same source, the word was as early as 1325 used to refer to a seat ofauthority, state or dignity, more or less throne-like

this pre-metonymic use clearly shows that the physical object is now associated insome situations with the properties of the person habitually occupying it

this is quickly followed by a use recognized by OED as figurative

the records starting from 1382 onwards show that the word is also used metonymi-cally to refer to a place or situation of authority, in the presence or absence of the

physical object used as a furniture item

the literal sense of the word also shows specialization: around the middle of the 15 thcentury it is used to refer to the seat in a church occupied by a bishop, and hence alsoepiscopal authority or dignity

at roughly the same time, the word is being used to refer to the seat from which aprofessor or other authorized teacher delivers his lectures

according to OED, the meaning of chair we see exemplified in (12) above, the officeor position of a professor, appears only later, the first written records stemming from1816 and onwards, but we may assume, on the strength of analogical evidence that itwas in use much earlier

but the word is used in another secondary metonymic sense in (13) below:

(13) Annual income from the fund is to be distributed by the chair and his/herdepartmental colleagues in any way appropriate to support and encourage

superior work by staff and students in the geological sciences.


16/23


the lexical item is here used to refer to the occupant of chair, as invested with its dig-nity and/or authority

first records for this use in OED appear around 1658

note that this secondary metonymic use has certain grammatical consequences

because the expression is now used to denote a personal referent, pronouns used ana-phorically must also indicate this fact, hence his/her determining departmental col-leagues, and not its

in other words, metonymy determines the gender class of a noun and also the choiceof appropriate anaphors

the very same lexical item can be used in another metonymic sense which also hassome interesting grammatical aspects

according to OED, in the special register of glass-making industry, chaircan be usedto refer to the gang of men consisting of the glass-blower and his assistants, due tothe fact that the lexeme is used in this industrial context to refer to a seat-like con-

traption in which a glass-blower sits this seat is furnished with long arms upon which the glass-blower rolls the pontil

cf. the following examples from OED:

(14) a. 1897 Worc. County Express3 Apr., There were ten chairs at the works, eachoccupied by a glassmaker, servitor, and footmaker.

b. 1902 Bham Daily Post 2 Apr., Eighty is the limit number of strawstemwineglasses to be made in six hours by a chair, which consists of threemen and a boy.

c. 1962 Gloss. Terms Glass Ind.(B.S.I.) 23 Chair, a special long-armed chairin which the craftsman sits when shaping glass. Ibid. 45 Chair, a team or

gang of workers producing blown or pressed glassware by hand.

in this use the noun should clearly count as a collective noun, which again hasconsequences for the range of possible anaphors

needless to say, the word chaircan also be used as a verb to indicate the activity ofpresiding over a body of people, acting as a chair, etc.

according to Dirven (1999), such cases of conversion, i.e. of change of thegrammatical category of the word accompanied by meaning shifts can also beconsidered to be the result of metonymy

some other metonymies have become conventionalized without shedding the trans-parent link between metonymic and non-metonymic meaning, e.g. the names of lo-calities and buildings used to refer to a whole range of metonymic targets rangingfrom governments or other political bodies, to institutions, to events

the following example from a TV show contains an interesting example of the nameof a well-known building used to refer to several possible targets:

(15) Well, the question was, hasBuckingham Palacereacted to this book.No, no, theyhavent.I dont suppose that theywill, Im afraid.(CNN, Larry King Live, Royal Family Gossip, Aired August 14, 2001- 21:00ET)


17/23


Buckingham Palace is the Queens official office and residence in London, but thisplace name is very frequently used to refer to the whole royal family, or to the wholecourt (but normally not just to the monarch)

as in (14) above, we again have an expression that is used metonymically to a collec-tive, and is treated as such in terms of anaphoric reference. In the following examples

retrieved through Google, the expression in question, functioning as subject, alsotakes plural verbs:

(16) a. Buckingham Palace areholding crisis talks this morning after discoveringthat Prince Charles is not actually the Prince of Wales after all.(www.mirror.co.uk/bigbrother/messageboard/tm_objectid=17085425&method=m2_msg_full&siteid=94762&...)

b. Buckingham Palace are hosting a childrens party in celebration of theQueens 80th birthday and High Position have been chosen as the officialoptimiser.

(www.londonbreaks.com/sightseeing/buckinghampalace.html)

the conceptual category of plexity, with the opposition between uniplex andmultiplex, underlies singular/plural and semelfactive/iterative distinctions with nounsand verbs, respectively

the category has to do with a quantitys state of articulation into equivalent elements

if the quantity consists of only one such element, it is uniplex and where itconsists of more than one, it is multiplex (Talmy 1978: 17).

cases of alternative construals resting on metonymic mappings involving certain

substances and the artifacts made from that substance on the one hand, and nounsdenoting individuated entities such as animals, trees and other plants relatedmetonymically to edible or proccessable substances derived from these individuatedentities, on the other

in cognitive linguistics this phenomenon of coercion or the imposition of thealternative construal is seen as made possible by metonymic mappings

it is treated as a subtype of the general PART-FOR-WHOLEmetonymy, specifically asMATERIAL-FOR-OBJECT-MADE-OF-THE-MATERIAL and its reverse, OBJECT-FOR-MATERIAL-CONSTITUTING-THE-OBJECT, both within the Constitution ICM(cf. Raddenand Kvecses 1999: 32)

he former metonymy, MATERIAL-FOR-OBJECT-MADE-OF-THE-MATERIAL, is quite

productive in English, as shown by the fact that numerous lexical items thatprimarily denote substances, e.g. lexemes for metals, which are inherently non-count,can be used to refer to a whole range of objects made of that metal. Cf. the followingseries of examples with silver. In (17), the lexeme is used to refer to substance, but in(18) we note a metonymic shift whereby the noun comes to denote some unspecified

piece of that metal, which Oxford English Dictionary (OED) glosses as a piece orstrip of silver.

(17) a. Silveris the top pick for 2007 but trade carefullyIf 2007 proves to be a stormy year in financial markets, as this column

predicted last week, then precious metals look the most solid investment


18/23


choice. However, precious metals would likely also tumble in a global

capital market sell-off, along with oil and other commodity prices.

b. But industrial silveris used for its physical properties, corrosion resulting infailures; in museums, when corrosion products change the visual appearance

of the art objects, they also form a protective coating, slowing down thecorrosion process.

(18) They are connected, all the zincs by one wire, and all the silvers by anotherwire.

in addition to (18), OED lists silveras having a series of derived meanings

it can be used in the sense of silver medal, silver coin (which is furthermetonymically extended to mean price of something in silver), silver thread:

(19) a. To have won one gold medal and two silvers in those Games was not only

phenomenal, it was historic.

b. The only US gold coins that he has are a 1883 $20, an 1898 $10, an 1897 $5and some silversthat we still need to sort through.

silver, sometimes pure, but more usually as alloy, i.e. mixed with other metals, isused to produce a range of jewelry and valuable household items

even the artifacts made from materials other than silver but which have a silvercoating or plating layer on object are referred to as silver(s):

(20) a. Too much polishing can wear down the finish on some silvers. Items whichare coated or plated should be washed by hand often and polished only onceor twice per year. As long as silver is cleansed regularly and stored properly,theres no need to polish silvermore than once a year.

b. Dip your silvers(jewellery, cutlery, etc. ) in water used for boiling potatoes.Wash with soap after an hour. This will bring back the sparkle.

in the domain of colours (colour being a very salient property of this metal) silvercan be used to refer to silver tincture (in heraldry), or silvery colour or lustre:

(21) DEEP Chocolate beauties should steer clear of ashy shades (light pinks, pale

blues, some silvers) that leave behind a fake frosty finish. Warm it up with 1.Becca Eye Colour Shimmer in Jacquard;

we also note an elliptical use of silver to refer to salt of silver, or silver nitrate, inphotography

this should nevertheless be considered metonymic, because silver is conceptually, ifnot chemically speaking, the more important component due to the final appearanceof the print with the colour resembling silver:

(22) Then in a chemically dark room, mix the collodion and silver, stirring as themixture is poured into the bottle intended for its reception.


19/23


probably the most exotic use of silver, clearly a metonymic shift based on the colouraspect of silver, is to refer to particular varieties of various animals, fish and insectsthat have silvery colour or markings making them distinct from other (sub)varieties.cf. some examples of this use:

(23) a. The exquisite silversare considered the most ethereal of all Persians.

b. There are two very different silver salmon this month. Early in the month,trolling the deep cold waters off Admiralty and Shelter Island and Icy Strait,we find huge schools of silvers, running from a few feet to a few hundredfeet deep, following the schools of bait on the way to those creeks wherethey will eventually spawn and die.

c. June bugs with panache, jewel scarabs come in colors that rival gemstones.Heat and humidity during their development may influence color: Somegreen species produce a pink form, and some silversturn gold.

reversing the direction of metonymic mappings involving an object and the material,we arrive at the OBJECT-FOR-MATERIAL-CONSTITUTING-THE-OBJECT within Raddenand Kvecses Constitution ICM(1999: 32)

some lexical items labelling the concept of the whole animal may stand only for aparticular aspect of the whole animal, i.e. its bodily substance/flesh/meat asprocessed and used as foodstuff

even literally, the substance that we use as food is only part of the whole animalsbody, as animals are skinned, boned, etc., and usually it is not the whole carcass thatis meant, but rather some smaller portion of it

the term animal grinding has been used to refer to specific type of the phenomenonvariably called logical metonymy, logical polysemy, or regular polysemy (cf.Copestake and Briscoe 1995, Gillon 1999, Pustejovsky and Bouillon 1995), i.e. tothose cases in which one and the same label can be used to refer holistically to theanimal species or specimen as well as to the flesh of the animal in question, notnecessarily conceived of as foodstuff, i.e. as meat of that animal, as illustrated in thefollowing examples:

(24) a. I would not eat cat, he murmurs.b. We did not always eat turkeyfor Christmas dinner.

there is no doubt that the referents designated by lexical items catand turkey (andmost other names animals) are inherently bounded

consequently, the lexical items used to label these concepts are treated as intrinsicallycountable

however, unbounded construals can be coerced onto most of them, as seen in our twoexamples above.

the noun is now reclassified in grammatical terms as a concrete but non-count, massnoun (this is sometimes designated partial conversion, cf. Quirk et al. 1985)

the metonymic mappings have as their grammatical consequence the possibility ofusing these nouns with non-default determiners, such as zero article, or quantifierssuch as someor little


20/23


this contrasts with the majority of nouns denoting animals used in their primarysense, where they are countable, capable of overtly indicating plural at both tokenand type/species level (though there are some notorious exceptions, e.g. fish, whichis capable of taking plural only at the type/species level)

their countable status is indicated by the fact that they may take the whole range of

determiners, indefinite, definite, and zero, if pluralized replacing the verb eatby a verb such as killin (9) a. and b., would result in reversing

the grinding construal, and cat taking a definite or an indefinite article, and turkeyprobably taking the indefinite article:

(25) a. I would not kill a/the cat, he murmurs.b. We did not always kill a turkeyfor Christmas dinner.

Activity 5.3. Read carefully the first paragraph from 5.2., repeated below and try to spot

all the various metaphors in it. Comment on the domains involved. Comment on casesin which metaphors and metonymies interact?

Sen. Robert Byrd is now calling for a road map out of Iraq and mournfully alludes tothe echoes of Vietnam. Another liberal warhorse has weighed in, too. Iraq is GeorgeBushs Vietnam, said Sen. Edward Kennedy. Iraq has developed into a quagmire.Measured objectively, the comparison to Vietnam is something of a stretch. That wardragged on for more than a decade and cost 50,000 lives. There were times during theVietnam War when America was losing 500 men a week. A year in, the death total inIraq stands at 458 soldiers killed in action. In some ways, a more accurate analogymight be to Lebanon, where Israel plunged into a power vacuum of feuding religiousfactions during the 1980s and was trapped in a hellhole of bombings and kidnappings.Last week Islamic extremists in Iraq began hijacking foreign civilians, including threeJapanese, and appeared to capture and hold hostage several American contractors. Bushcould face a full-fledged hostage crisisand confront the sort of dilemma Jimmy Carterdid in Iran in 1980.

Activity 5.4. Translate the following:

a. It was therefore a bombshell when Oswald Avery and colleagues at the RockefellerInstitute demonstrated in 1944 that it was the DNA which carried the genetic mes-sage.

b. Bens a real fruit-cake turning down that offer for his bike.c. On je tek sitna riba u usporedbi s njegovim pretpostavljenima.d. On je udna ptica.e. Srela je svoju davnu ljubav.f. Ostao je jo traak nade.g. My secretary is an absolute gem.

Activity 5.5. Which part of the house is meant as the active zone of the metonymy in thefollowing examples?

a. Im having the house painted.


21/23


b. Have you locked the house?c. He entered the house.d. Im cleaning the house.e. They are having an open house today.

Activity 5.6. Identify the conceptual metonymies in the following italicised expressions.

a. He drank the whole bottle.b. Arthur married money.c. Einstein was one of the most creative minds of the last century.d. There are too many mouths to feed.e. Own land in the great American West. (advertisement)f.Brussels has been negotiating withBoeing for months.g.My wife has been towed away.h. Where areyouparked?

Activity 5.7. Specify whether the metonymic expressions below are of the type PART-FOR-WHOLE, WHOLE-FOR-PARTor of the type PART-FOR-PART.

a. Did you hear the whistle?b. She is my joyc. She married money.d. Bob spent last summer inAmerica.e. Cambridgewont publish the book.f. The carneeds washing.

g. He is an experienced farm hand.h. Bushattacked Saddam.i. Hold your tongue.

j. He spends too much time in front of the tube.

Activity 5.8. Complete the following expressions with metonymically used body partnouns from the list. Determine the type of metonymy in question.

face nose ear mouth(s) teeth neckheart arm tongue lip head blood

1 She has a very nasty ______________. She can quarrel and say mean things.

2 The law must have _____________ and must be enforced.3 You wont have to think, just follow your ___________.4 I wont have him risking his _____________ on that motorcycle.5 His good looks won him the election but he has still to prove that he's not just a pretty_____________.

6 Theres a lot of bad _______________ between those two families.7 The Giants need a stronger ________________ in right field.8 Most of the crowned ___________ of Europe have been entertained in this palace.9 He had a keen _________. No movement could escape him.10 Dont make me write it again! Have a _____________!11 I have five ______________ to feed at home.12 Dont give me any of your _________________!


22/23


Activity 5.9. Complete the following sentences with appropriate metonymically moti-vated exocentric compounds from the list.

bluecoat blockhead butterfingers dimwitblue stocking egghead bigmouth Redcoat(s)

1 Beyond the crease he also had no delusions of grandeur. He was not the __________he was often labelled after his colourful outbursts.

2 What he got was an integrated cooperative run by an elected board and what thenewspapers at the time described as an ______________ community full of aca-demics, federal workers and diplomats.

3 Harley could hardly do better than to have Shanghai's cops keep the peace atop theirdistinctive made-in-America cruisers. In a best-case scenario, Shanghais________________would set in motion a domino effect of urban change, from Bei-

jing to Guangzhou, led by a fleet of gleaming Milwaukee iron.

4 And just as her husband scarcely fits the present Tory mould, so Gill Clarke is an un-typical Tory wife. Instead she is held in some awe as a formidable _____________with, according to one commentator, a tinge of Laura Ashley liberalism.

5 That's a holiday in Massachusetts and Maine called Patriots Day. It commemoratesthe battles with the ________________at Lexington and Concord.

6 The Games could have self-destructed after the disaster that was Munich and the flopthat was Moscow. But the International Olympic Committee, with the vision of a batand the common sense of a slug, was shown by capitalist Peter Ueberroth that evennincompoops could make money from Olympics -- if all they want to do is makemoney. The IOC - _______________ leading the ______________- would like us to

believe all is well, because the foul institution thrives on dough, which, of course, hasled to corruption.

7 But before we can brag, we'll need to pick up tips from professionals. Tips that arentcomplicated and that even a __________________ like me can handle.

8 There was a boy in my class who had made a fine art of being a poor victim throughtwo classes, acting the ________________, sitting dribbling, saying he couldnt doany work. It was clear he was quite bright and I was determined to give him goals andhave expectations of him.

Activity 5.10. All the nouns in the following sets of examples are used in a figurativecontext. Determine whether they, as well as the expressions they are part of, are usedmetaphorically of metonymically.

a. gun

1 He was the sixth gun on the job.2 You should stick to your guns3 This is a job for a hired gun.4 Do not jump the gun.

b. gold


23/23


1 She wore so much gold its no wonder she was mugged.2 He is going to win the gold in Athens.

c. wheels

1 I dont have wheels, so Ill need a lift.2 The wheel of fashion is every quicker.3 After many hours at the wheel I was ready for a stop.

metonymy def,comparison,and examples

Documents