Posted: 31 Oct 2008

Abstract

It is a great virtue of cognitive linguistics to have explored the central role of metaphor and metonymy in human conceptualization. Recent work has studied in depth the mappings, compressions, and integrations that yield a diversity of surface products, not just in language use, but also in religion, art, math, technology, and other human endeavors.

In the present talk, I discuss a range of phenomena, broadly classified as metonymy, but in fact quite different from each other in terms of mapping schemes, degrees of compression, and deferred reference. Typically, such phenomena also involve metaphoric compressions and covert parallel counterfactuals. In order to refine the analyses, linguistic tests will be proposed, based on the distribution of reflexives and substitution in causal chains.

The detailed examination of compression in meaning construction leads to a research program that seeks to understand metaphor and metonymy in terms of deeper regularities and a wide range of mapping possibilities.