Naslov
Metonymic networks, subjecthood, and topic continuity across languages: When tiers collapse and chains break

Autori
Brdar, Mario ; Brdar-Szabó, Rita

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

Izvornik
Cognitive Perspectives on Contrastive Grammar / - , 2011

Skup
Cognitive Perspectives on Contrastive Grammar

Mjesto i datum
Biała, Poljska, 26.09.2011. - 27.09.2011

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Plenarno

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
metonymy; contrastive analysis; metonymic chain; subject; topic

Sažetak
In a cross-linguistic comparison of referential metonymies of the type PLACE-FOR-INSTITUTION, illustrated in (1): (1) a. The Soviets have recently shown an interest in reestablishing the diplomatic relations that Moscow broke off after the 1967 Six-Day War. b. Russia, which claims it has fulfilled its military commitments to Moldova and Georgia, has been blocking such a declaration for the past five years. it would hardly require any effort to confirm that they have metonymic equivalents in practically any language (cf. Brdar & Brdar-Szabó 2009). Metonymies of the type POSSESSED-FOR-THE-POSSESSOR, illustrated in (2): (2) A lot of people used to think I was a black belt just because I was a professional athlete… would probably also be demonstrated to find more or less direct equivalents in many languages. We claim that there is lot more in such examples in terms of contrastive significance than meets the eye. Once we move beyond “flat”, one-dimensional, horizontal types of contrastive studies, we can discover many exciting paths in the woods connecting the contrastive trees and leading to new areas of inquiry. One of the first necessary steps in this direction is to abandon this strict horizontal procedure, and start studying metaphor and metonymy in authentic discourse as they develop in conceptual networks, i.e. metaphtonymic chains and tiers. The sentence containing Moscow in (1) a. above, is in the actual text followed by the following two sentences, with two other occurrences of Moscow: (3) Reason: Gorbachev is anxious to reassert Soviet influence on the Middle East peace process and realizes that will be difficult so long as Moscow has no diplomatic ties with one of the region's major players. Jerusalem has made it clear to the Soviets that progress on the matter is directly related to Moscow's future record on Jewish emigration. These three metonymic expressions, interspersed with two occurrences of the Soviets, form a metonymic chain, all sharing the same metonymic target concept. Further, we point to the fact that black belt in (2) is a double-tiered metonymy here because we first have an object which in karate and judo stands metonymically for a certain level of expertise and skill in these martial arts. On top of that first tier, we have an object standing for its possessor. (Cf. Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2007, on double and even triple metonymies). Drawing on the rich tradition of Polish theoretical work in contrastive linguistics, we move freely in two case studies on referential metonymies between a number of methodological tools such as text-bound and systematic contrastive analysis, statistical, translational, semanto-syntactic, substantial and pragmatic equivalence (Krzeszowski) aiming: 1. to uncover a whole series of fine-grained contrasts with regard to the productivity of conceptual metonymies in English, German, Croatian and Hungarian (of the type that has so far gone unnoticed), in the sense that metonymic chains can exhibit significant differences with respect to both their productivity and their length, or in the number of metonymic tiers languages typically allow, and 2. to show how these cross-linguistic differences and similarities can be motivated by linking them in a long range manner to some other contrastive facts about these languages that have to do with subjecthood, morphosyntactic agreement, and topic-continuity, i.e. the morphosyntactic givens of the respective systems and the information packaging preferences in these languages.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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