Naslov
How metonymy and grammar interact: Effects and constraints in a cross-linguistic perspective

Autori
Brdar, Mario ; Brdar-Szabó, Rita

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
1st International Symposium on Figurative Thought and Language

Mjesto i datum
Solun, Grčka, 25.04.2014. - 26.04.2014

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
metonymy; grammar; contrastive linguistics; polysemy

Sažetak
Cognitive and other literature on grammaticalization freely makes use of metaphor in accounting for a wide range of phenomena. The impact of metonymy on grammar, on the other hand, is still a virtually unchartered area. Recent years have seen a marked rise in the interest in the interaction between grammar and metonymy, convincingly showing that metonymic processes are crucially involved in shaping central areas of grammar (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza and Otal Campo 2002, Brdar 2007, and the chapters in Panther, Thornburg and Barcelona 2009). The impact of metonymy on grammar is most conspicuous against the background of functional ef-fects that metonymic mappings produce in the grammatical system. In other words, metonymies make it possible to express certain grammatical distinctions without any explicit marking on the lexical items functioning as the metonymic vehicle, but the grammatical, i.e. morphosyntactic, effects of this may be observable in a wider context, e.g. in the presence or absence of the indefinite article and/or plural marker: (1) We raise our own pork, beef and lamb but haven't tried chicken yet. (2) It’s not often our ears will prick up at the sound of a new beer being launched. (3) Crack open an Achel and I will make my decision then on the Saaz or more Styrian goldings. This simplified way of looking at things might imply that the relationship between metonymy and grammar is one-way traffic, grammar being infinitely plastic and therefore easily formed by metonymic processes. By applying a cross-linguistic perspective in studying grammatical effects of metonymy in several small-scale case studies (grinding/portioning, collective nouns, MANNER FOR ACTION metonymy) in Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Uralic languages, we aim to demonstrate in this presentation that things are more complex than that and that their interaction practically always involves some two-way traffic. It turns out that whether a certain type of metonymy is available in a given area in a given lan-guage is often dependent on the ecological conditions, or the structural givens present in the grammatical system (including its word-formation system). In other words, grammatical factors such as the presence or the absence of a given element in the system may play a role in constraining the application of various types of metonymy in that language. Since more than one element may be involved, it is of course possible that the application of a metonymy may be constrained by simultaneous absence or presence of all the elements in question, or by simultaneous presence of one or some elements and the absence of the other(s), e.g. by the lack of definite and indefinite articles and of a rich derivational system with dozens of suffixes, as e.g. in Croatian. In sum, we are led to conclude that, depending on its particular character, one language’s grammatical “effect” of metonymy may turn out to be another language’s constraint on the application of metonymy.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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