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H. V. Shelestiuk

Metonymy as a tool of cognition and representation: A natural language analysis

This article systematizes the manifestations of metonymy in natural language. The principal metonymical patterns in English nouns are discovered to be: resultative, causative, instrumental, objective, locative and possessive. Synchronically, a statistical analysis of their frequency is carried out. Diachronically, the historical-semantic analysis is undertaken to ascertain the development of metonymical patterns in the cases of categorial and prototypal polysemy. In the section devoted to metonymy in imaginative speech the hierarchical taxonomy of metonymical tropes and ?gures is presented. In conclusion, there is an overview of metonymy in comparison with other means of semantic change and some ideas on conceptual metonymy.

Semiotica, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0037-1998
Volume: 2005, 06/2005
Pages: 125 - 144

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