engleski

Locatives as (non-)subjects and referential metonymy

Much of the recent research seems to indicate that referential metonymies, in contrast to predicational ones, are relatively unconstrained. However, a closer look reveals that there are some significant differences among languages concerning the availability of the former type too. A corpus-based case study on the availability of metonymically used proper names in the language of media, such as, (1) Beijing was outraged, and it looked like Washington had done it on purpose. shows that this particular type of metonymy is ubiquitous in English and German, but not so in Hungarian and Croatian. The constraints seem at first blush to have to do with cognitive, discoursal-pragmatic and cultural factors. But even if these are discounted, the differences between the two groups of languages are still larger than expected, which indicates that other constraining factors must be at work here, some of which may turn out to be grammatical in nature.

referential metonymy; corpus; proper names; grammar

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