Metonymy and word-formation revisited

Laura A. Janda

doi:10.1515/cog-2014-0008

Article

Metonymy and word-formation revisited

Laura A. Janda

Published/Copyright: June 5, 2014

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Cognitive Linguistics Volume 25 Issue 2

Abstract

Brdar and Brdar-Szabó (this volume) offer a critique of Janda (2011). Janda (2011) found that the same cognitive strategy that facilitates metonymy, namely use of a conceptual source to access a target, can also be invoked in many patterns of affixal word-formation. In other words, many cases of word-formation appear to be motivated by metonymic association. Brdar and Brdar-Szabó claim that it is incorrect to refer to word-formational processes as metonymies. In addition to the robust parallels evidenced in my data, I offer three arguments to defend my use of the term “metonymy”: (1) a broader definition of metonymy facilitates more insightful generalizations; (2) there is no fixed boundary between lexical metonymy and word-formational metonymy since they coexist in the lexicon-grammar continuum; and (3) context, whether it be a suffix or other cues, is always a factor in metonymy.

Keywords: metonymy; word-formation

Received: 2013-10-9

Revised: 2014-4-14

Accepted: 2014-4-16

Published Online: 2014-6-5

Published in Print: 2014-6-1

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2014-0008

Keywords for this article

metonymy; word-formation