Transfer of value by contiguity. Metonymy: Definition

The term "metonymy" comes from the Greek word meaning "renaming". This is a path that represents the transfer of a value by contiguity - occasional or regular - to the name of a specific class of objects, or some individual of them for an object or other class associated with it by being involved in a specific situation or contiguity.

What names can I transfer

The basis of metonymy is spatial, conceptual, eventual, logical and syntagmatic relations between certain categories that relate to reality and its reflection in the consciousness of a person, fixed in specific meanings of words - between persons, objects, actions, phenomena, processes, events, social institutions, Time, place, etc.

You can transfer the name:

1) from the receptacle to the volume of the contents or to the content itself, for example: "glass" - "measure of loose and liquid masses", "vessel for drinking";

2) from the material to the products made from it: "copper" - "copper money" and "metal";

3) from a settlement, a place for an event related to it or a set of inhabitants inhabiting it: "The whole village laughed at it", "road" - "trip", "path laid for traffic", "travel time";

3) with a certain action on its result, the object involved in the action (tool, object, subject) or place: "stop" is both the place where the transport stops and a certain action, the "whistle" is an adaptation for whistling And the very act of whistling;

5) from the form of expressing a certain content or its concrete, material embodiment to the content as a whole: "an interesting book" refers to the content, and the "thick book" refers to the subject;

6) the transfer of meaning along the contiguity from science, the branch of knowledge to its subject and vice versa: "grammar" is both the "system of language" and the "division of linguistics";

7) from the event, the social event to its participants: "The conference will be held in June" and "the Conference agreed on an important decision";

8) from the institution, social organization to the premises, the totality of its employees: "factory strikes" and "repair factory";

9) from the part to the whole and vice versa: "pear" - "fruit" and "tree" (transfer of the name from part to whole is called synecdoche - this is a special case of metonymy);

10) from a certain emotional state to the cause that caused it: "horror" - "terrible event" and "fear";

11) the author's name can be used to designate the style, model or his works created by him: "publish, read Tolstoy," Bull - "furniture with some type of decor" and "name of the master."

Regular metonymy

Metonymy, reflecting the interaction of concepts, categories and / or objects, becomes regular when it creates semantic models of word-formation types and multi-valued words, often combining different types of values: event, feature, subject (concrete and abstract). For example, action names are used regularly to designate some resultant object ("composition", "work", "story", "decision", "construction").

Suffix polysemy

If the metonymic transfer is carried out regularly within the word-formation type, its consequence may be the suffix polysemy, rather than the stem (compare, for example, the value of such verbal suffixes as -enation). The association of certain objects by contiguity, and also by the logical closeness of concepts, turns into a connectedness of meanings. Metonymy of this kind serves certain purposes - nominative, and also promotes the development of lexical language tools.

What causes metonymy

This pathway generates various syntagmatic transformations. The metonymy that arises regularly on the basis of a sentence or phrase, which is the result of a so-called elliptical contraction of the text, usually retains some degree of its limitation by the conditions of its use, without creating a contextually independent new meaning, for example: "In the museum there are two Van Gogh" (meaning "two paintings Van Gogh "), but it is impossible to say:" Van Gogh depicts a young woman ".

Relationship with the context

The most strong link to the context is the metonymy (examples in Russian, see below), in which the designation of a certain situation, based on a predicate, reduces only to the component of the meaning of the object: "What's the matter?" - "Heart (head, teeth, throat) "- in the sense of" the heart hurts (head, teeth, throat). This use is limited to specific semantic and syntactic contexts. So, some portable meaning (examples - "heart", "head") can not be combined with procedural verbs and adjectives that determine the course of the disease and the nature of pain. We can not say "a strong (aching, sharp) heart" or "the heart is aggravated (exacerbated, intensified)." In this case, the transfer of the value by contiguity does not create a context-independent meaningful filling of the word. It serves as a means of revealing the semantic variants of its use. The portable value, examples of which were mentioned above, is closely related to the context.

How is metonymy used?

Uses metonymy (synecdoche most often) as the reception of some situational nomination of the object according to its external individualizing details. Let us illustrate our thought. Take such sentences with metonymy, like "Hey, a beard!", "A hat reads a newspaper". Such use is analogous to its derivatives, denoting belonging - a substantivized adjective and a noun, cf. "Beard" and "bearded man", "bearded". This kind of metonymy (examples in the Russian language - Little Red Riding Hood, Dwarf Nose, etc.) often serves as a means of creating nicknames, nicknames.

The designation of a social group

If a detail called metonymy is typical of a multitude of individuals, then it can take root in the language and as a designation of some social group, for example, the word "bast" can refer to the peasants of Russia in the pre-revolutionary period. But such metonymy is devoid of denotative (semantic) stability. In different historical contexts, the name "beard" was used to refer to wise men, peasants, boyars, elders, as well as a certain group of young people. Metonomy, the examples in the Russian language which we just brought up, is very common.

Syntactic positions of metonymy

The use of this trail (synecdoche, primarily) primarily for the designation of the subject of speech combines it with the syntactic positions of the subject, treatment and additions. As a predicate, a situational transfer of a value by contiguity is uncommon, since it does not perform any characteristic function. If metonymy is used in a predicate, it is transformed into a metaphor, for example, "hat" is "sprawl", "galosh" is "a ruin, a decrepit person." The use of names in the sense of partitivism in a predicate, usually serving the purposes of aspectizing a subject, is not considered in most cases as a transfer by contiguity. Let's illustrate our thought. Let's take an example: "He was a recalcitrant mind" - the characteristic refers to a specific aspect of a person, more precisely, to his intellectual makeup.

No synecdoc is used in any existential sentences or their equivalents, which introduce an object into the narrative world. For example, we can not begin the narrative with words such as: "There was a (one, some) red cap." This use is not perceived as a designation of the person, but as the personification of an object.