Startseite On metonymy-based lexical innovations in Nigerian Pidgin English and Tok Pisin: A cognitive linguistic perspective
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On metonymy-based lexical innovations in Nigerian Pidgin English and Tok Pisin: A cognitive linguistic perspective

  • Krzysztof Kosecki

    Krzysztof Kosecki is an Associate Professor of English in the Institute of English Studies of the University of Lodz, Poland. His research focuses on theories of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, signed languages, onomastics, theory of translation, ethnolinguistics, contact languages, cognitive poetics, as well as on American, English, Irish, and German literature and culture. He is the author of monographs On the part-whole configuration and multiple construals of salience within a simple lexeme (2005, Lodz University Press) and Language, time, and biology: A cognitive perspective (2008, Higher Vocational School in Włocławek Press); papers in journals Anglica, Beyond Philology, Linguistica Silesiana, Research in Language, Neophilological Quarterly, and Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric; chapters in monographs Reimagining the First World War (2015, Cambridge Scholars Publishing), Conceptualizations of time (2016, John Benjamins), Gothic peregrinations (2019, Routledge), Contacts and contrasts in cultures and languages (2019, 2020, Axel Springer), as well as in numerous volumes published by Peter Lang, Lodz University Press, and other Polish publishers. He is also the editor of Perspectives on metonymy (2007, Peter Lang) and coeditor of Cognitive processes in language (2012, Peter Lang), Time and temporality in language and human experience (2014, Peter Lang), Empirical methods in language studies (2015, Peter Lang), and a special issue of Lodz Papers in Pragmatics – Between Grammar and Culture: Cognitive Insights into Language Use (2022, Mouton de Gruyter).

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 20. Juli 2023

Abstract

As contact languages, pidgins and creoles arise in mixed linguistic environments. Drawing much of their vocabularies from one, frequently European, language and – to a lesser extent – from a number of indigenous languages, they have lexicons that are reduced in comparison with those of their lexifiers. To compensate for the poor lexification, pidgin and creoles create novel polysemy-based extensions of lexical items or develop periphrastic constructions equivalent of the missing lexical roots. Assuming a cognitive linguistic perspective, which emphasizes the role of conceptualization in the construction of meaning and the figurative character of concepts, the paper deals with the lexicons of Nigerian Pidgin English and Tok Pisin, two contact languages representative for the Atlantic and the Pacific – the two major areas of linguistic contact. The analysis focuses on the first of the above-mentioned compensation strategies. It is argued that (i) the expressions borrowed from English and various indigenous languages acquire senses that are absent in English; (ii) the new senses are frequently based on metonymy, which serves as a major polysemy-based strategy of lexicon extension; (iii) most of the novel lexical extensions fall within the metonymic patterns that are well-established in English.

About the author

Krzysztof Kosecki

Krzysztof Kosecki is an Associate Professor of English in the Institute of English Studies of the University of Lodz, Poland. His research focuses on theories of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, signed languages, onomastics, theory of translation, ethnolinguistics, contact languages, cognitive poetics, as well as on American, English, Irish, and German literature and culture. He is the author of monographs On the part-whole configuration and multiple construals of salience within a simple lexeme (2005, Lodz University Press) and Language, time, and biology: A cognitive perspective (2008, Higher Vocational School in Włocławek Press); papers in journals Anglica, Beyond Philology, Linguistica Silesiana, Research in Language, Neophilological Quarterly, and Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric; chapters in monographs Reimagining the First World War (2015, Cambridge Scholars Publishing), Conceptualizations of time (2016, John Benjamins), Gothic peregrinations (2019, Routledge), Contacts and contrasts in cultures and languages (2019, 2020, Axel Springer), as well as in numerous volumes published by Peter Lang, Lodz University Press, and other Polish publishers. He is also the editor of Perspectives on metonymy (2007, Peter Lang) and coeditor of Cognitive processes in language (2012, Peter Lang), Time and temporality in language and human experience (2014, Peter Lang), Empirical methods in language studies (2015, Peter Lang), and a special issue of Lodz Papers in Pragmatics – Between Grammar and Culture: Cognitive Insights into Language Use (2022, Mouton de Gruyter).

Abbreviations used in text

PL =

plural

Sp. =

Spanish

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Published Online: 2023-07-20
Published in Print: 2023-05-25

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