Abstract
Since the early 1980s, metonymy has progressively gained central stage in linguistic investigations. The advent of cognitive linguistics marked a new turn in the study of this trope conceived, not as a deviation from semantic conventions (contra classical rhetorical theories), but as a phenomenon rooted in non-language-specific mechanisms of conceptualization of the world. Acknowledging that metonymy is ultimately cognitive in nature, this paper proposes to consider metonymy from its multiple levels of manifestation, integrating cognitive, pragmatic, semantic, but also ontological angles of approach. Taking whole-for-part (WP) metonymies as a case study, I aim to show how recent developments within these respective disciplines can enrich our understanding of such metonymic mechanisms, sometimes without even identifying them as such. This paper proposes to establish a dialog between these disciplines on the topic of WP-metonymy. So, after a presentation of the most standard cognitive and pragmatic approaches to WP-metonymy, I will argue for the relevance of recent semantic investigations on quantity gradability, and for the theoretical importance of keeping these two kinds of part-reference clearly apart. I will show that the literature on gradability provides strong semantic arguments for doing so. Finally, connecting the debate on WP-metonymy with the ontological debate on property inherence will open the way for a formal treatment of WP-metonymy within ground logic.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Friederike Moltmann, Benjamin Schnieder and Nathaniel Hansen for their suggestions on previous versions of this paper, as well as the reviewers for their insightful comments. Part of the work has been financed by the ODASP FP7-people-2013-IEF project (331196).
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Arapinis, A. Whole-for-part metonymy, classification, and grounding. Linguist and Philos 38, 1–29 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-014-9164-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-014-9164-6