Volume 17, Issue 3

A definition of metonymy that has gained some popularity in Cognitive Linguistics contrasts metonymical semantic shifts within a domain or domain matrix with metaphorical shifts that cross domain boundaries. In the past few years, however, this definition of metonymy has become subject to more and more criticism, in the sense that it relies too much on the vague notions of domains or domain matrices to be fully reliable. In this article, we address this problem by focusing on a nonunitary, prototypical definition of contiguity (the concept that used to be seen as the defining feature of metonymy before Cognitive Linguistics introduced domains and domain matrices). On the basis of the traditional pre-structuralist literature on metonymy, we identify a large number of typical metonymical patterns, and show that they can be classified in terms of the type of contiguity they are motivated by. We argue that metonymies, starting from spatial part-whole contiguity as the core of the category, can be plotted against three dimensions: strength of contact (going from part-whole containment over physical contact to adjacency without contact), boundedness (involving an extension of the part-whole relationship towards unbounded wholes and parts), and domain (with shifts from the spatial to the temporal, the spatio-temporal and the categorial domain).

In their article in this issue of Cognitive Linguistics , Piersman and Geeraerts (henceforth P and G), consider a very wide range of semantic shifts to be instances of metonymy. P and G propose a single conceptual process to account for all of these supposed metonymic semantic shifts, namely contiguity. P and G provide a prototype definition of contiguity. In great detail, P and G classify the range of examples of metonymy in their article according to three ‘dimensions’ of prototypicality: strength of contact, degree of boundedness and domain (from space to time to spatiotemporal and ‘categorical’ domain). In this comment, I argue that contiguity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for metonymy, even granting the prototype definition of contiguity provided by P and G; that association, analyzed in terms of domain highlighting (Croft 1993, 2002) provides a valid necessary condition; and that many examples taken by P and G (and other cognitive linguists) to be metonymy are better explained in terms of other theoretical constructs developed in cognitive linguistics.

Misunderstandings are common, even among semanticists. Indeed, after having read William Croft's answer to our article, we believe that most of his criticisms arise from a misunderstanding of our intentions, and more broadly, of the type of model that we have developed. In this answer to Croft, we will first argue that our prototype model, as any prototype model in general, does not claim to put forward any necessary or sufficient attributes for the concept that it describes. Second, we will show that our use of contiguity is less controversial and less problematic than Croft claims. Third, we will counter Croft's criticism that our model is undermined by its own use of domains. Fourth, we will wrap up with some final remarks on Croft's defense of domain highlighting.

In a number of recent publications on deverbal -ee suffixation (Barker 1998; Booij and Lieber 2004; Portero Muñoz 2003) the position is defended that the extension of the system towards agentive entities (e.g., escapee, returnee, attendee) can only be explained in semantic terms, by attributing some degree of “lack of volition” (Barker 1998) or “undergoerhood” (Portero Muñoz 2003) to the profiled Agents. In this paper I show that the semantics of -ee derivation is remarkably similar to the semantics encoded by a number of past-participial constructions. I suggest that this systematic relationship between the system of -ee derivation (which originated as the anglicized version of the French past participle) and various clausal and adjectival uses of the past participle offers a natural, symbolic explanation for the extension from non-agentive to agentive -ee nouns which is more satisfactory than a purely semantic one.

In this study, we argue that the increasingly popular concept of subjectivity is in need of a more fine-grained analysis, and we make an attempt to set up a typology of distinct sub-categories. We first discuss a number of problems that emerge from the literature, such as the conflicting views on the nature of subjectivity, and the general vagueness of the way speaker-involvement is defined in order to detect subjectivity. On the basis of two case studies, we then propose to distinguish between at least three types of subjectivity, one pragmatic type relating to the use of an expression, and two semantic types where speaker-involvement pertains to the meaning of an expression. The distinction between the latter two types is based on syntactic criteria, and semantically relates to whether a particular item functions in the build-up of the content of a message, or in the enactment of the speaker's position with respect to this content.

This paper provides evidence for the interaction of conceptual structure, cultural models and discursive practices in motivating pain lexicalizations and related constructions in Greek. It is argued that pain is construed as a process or state, a designated property, or an instance of a process or state, prototypically associated with an experiencer and a cause. The elaboration of this core semantics of pain by image-schematic and metaphorical structure and a cultural narrative of selfhood yields metaphorical extensions of pain as an entity and motivates its understanding in the physical and the psychological modalities. Finally, frequency counts of pain lexicalizations in different discourse genres provide evidence for the discursive motivation of the lexical categories at hand. These findings seem to argue for points of contact between cognitive linguistics (Lakoff 1987; Sweetser 1990; Langacker 2000), a discursive view of relativity (Clark 1996; Lucy 1996), and a neo-Whorfian perspective on language as a bio-cultural hybrid (Levinson 2003).

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Miriam Taverniers, and Louise Ravelli (eds.), Grammatical Metaphor: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics . John Benjamins: Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2003, 453 pp., ISBN 90 272 4748 / 1 58811368 X. (Gerard Steen)