Metonymy as a prototypical category

Abstract

A definition of metonymy that has gained some popularity in Cognitive Linguistics contrasts metonymical semantic shifs within a domain or domain matrix with metaphorical shifts that cross domain boundaries. In the past few years, however, this definition of metonymy has become subject to more and more criticism, in the sense that it relies too much on the vague notions of domains or domain matrices to be fully reliable. In this article, we address this problem by focusing on a nonunitary, prototypical definition of contiguity (the concept that used to be seen as the defining feature of metonymy before Cognitive Linguistics introduced domains and domain matrices). On the basis of the traditional pre-structuralist literature on metonymy, we identify a large number of typical metonymical patterns, and show that they can be classiJied in terms of the type of contiguity they are motivated by. We argue that metonymies, starting from spatial partwhole contiguity as the core of the category, can be plotted against three dimensions: strength of contact (going from part-whole containment over physical contact to adjacency without contact), boundedness (involving an extension of the part-whole relationship towards unbounded wholes and parts), and domain (with shifts from the spatial to the temporal, the spatiotemporal and the categorial domain).

Metonymy and word-formation revisited

“…While "domain" and "ICM" do not explicitly appear in my definition, I do not deny or ignore the role of the domain in metonymy in Janda (2011). My article contains a summary of various strategies scholars have used in defining metonymy and domains/dominions have their rightful place in that discussion (citing Croft 1993;Langacker 1993Langacker , 2009Ruiz de Mendoza 2000), alongside contiguity (citing Jakobson 1980Jakobson [1956; Peirsman and Geeraerts 2006), and Frames/ICMs (citing Kövecses and Radden 1998;Radden and Kövecses 1999;Panther and Thornburg 1999;Barcelona 2002). However, I do not arbitrate among these strategies.…”

“…I focus instead on the common ground they share because the differences between them do not significantly impact the goal of my study, which is merely to explore parallels between lexical metonymy and word-formation. I follow the contiguity strategy more closely because some of its proponents offer a detailed classification of lexical metonymy (Peirsman and Geeraerts 2006) that proves useful in my study. However, I do recognize the domain as a useful concept, and my approach is compatible with those that employ the concept of domain.…”

Complementarity of Space and Time in Distance Representations

“…There is no such thing as the perception of time, but only the perception of events and locomotions" (Gibson, 1975, p. 295). Lakoff and Johnson (1999, p. 138) used this point of view to define time as a metonymical phenomenon relating to recurrence of events (see also Kosecki, 2005;Peirsman & Geeraerts, 2006;cf. Croft, 2006).…”

Fraseología y lingüística cognitiva. Estudio interdisciplinar de la fraseologización de la locución somática de boca en boca

“…No basta con que la fuente y la meta se hallen en el mismo dominio, sino que según Fauconnier (1994), deben estar conectadas mediante proyecciones con función pragmática. Peirsman y Geeraerts (2006) presentan los diferentes tipos de metonimia en función de la prototipicidad de estas. De este modo, las más prototípicas son aquellas que operan en el domino espacial y material, mientras que en la periferia se hallan las que actúan en el dominio de los "grupos y colecciones" de entidades.…”