engleski

Predicative functions of metonymy in medical discourse

This paper studies the role of predicative metonymy (Panther and Thornburg, 1999) taking into account some of its occurrences in medical discourse. Predicative metonymies mostly represent relationships in events, and occur as an interaction of relations and participants. The interpretation of the cases is based on the definition of metonymy proposed by Barcelona (2003). The source of metonymy highlights the target meaning that becomes salient in a given communicative situation. The examples were extracted from research articles published in medical journals in English and classified in four groups representing metonymic situations: 1. PREDICATIVE ADJECTIVE FOR NOUN, VERB OR ADVERB represents an interaction of the predicate and other participants. For example: But the proposal that he seems most enthusiastic about is a plan to promote health-savings accounts (The Lancet Vol. 365). 2. ONE TENSE FOR ANOTHER TENSE is a variant of the conceptual metonymy PART FOR PART in the time domain. For example:Some investigations have shown an association with obstetric complications but findings have been inconsistent owing to differences in sampling and methods (JAMA Vol. 292). 3. ONE ACTION FOR ANOTHER ACTION represents the WHOLE-PART relationship in the action domain. For example: Vitamin D deficiency often goes undetected (JAMAVol.292). 4. Metonymic situation GENERAL FOR ACTUAL is highly productive is English scientific language. It is realized by the construction to be likely + infinitive, or verbal construction tend+ infinitive: The Bosnia group were younger ; less likely to be married, more likely to have remained in service, and only from the Army (BMJ Vol. 327).The role of metonymy in these cases is to highlight the aspect of an action which is salient in a predicate and thus allows a more precise understanding of an action, or a usage in accordance with scientific language conventions.

conceptual theory of metonymy; cognitive linguistics; scientific discourse

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