scholarly journals Aspects of metonymy in language and thought

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
Katarina Rasulic

Based on the theoretical insights from cognitive linguistics, this paper aims to shed fresh light on certain aspects of metonymy as one of the basic mechanisms of conceptualsemantic organization. It is argued that the prototype model of categorization can provide substantial explanatory potential in the linguistic treatment of metonymy, that anthropocentricity is an important aspect of metonymic conceptualization, and that metonymy has multiple roles in the creation of meaning, including meaning extension, meaning construction and meaning imposition. The significance of investigating the multifaceted character of metonymic conceptualization (as well as of figurative language and thought in general) from an interdisciplinary perspective is highlighted as fundamental for a more comprehensive insight into the nature of meaning.

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Elena Tomasuolo ◽  
Chiara Bonsignori ◽  
Pasquale Rinaldi ◽  
Virginia Volterra

AbstractThe present study investigates the types of verb and symbolic representational strategies used by 10 deaf signing adults and 13 deaf signing children who described in Italian Sign Language 45 video clips representing nine action types generally communicated by five general verbs in spoken Italian. General verbs, in which the same sign was produced to refer to several different physical action types, were rarely used by either group of participants. Both signing children and adults usually produced specific depicting predicates by incorporating, through a representational strategy, the object and/or the modality of the action into the sign. As for the different types of representational strategies, the adults used the hand-as-object strategy more frequently than the children, who, in turn, preferred to use the hand-as-hand strategy, suggesting that different degrees of cognitive complexity are involved in these two symbolic strategies. Addressing the symbolic iconic strategies underlying sign formation could provide new insight into the perceptual and cognitive processes of linguistic meaning construction. The findings reported here support two main assumptions of cognitive linguistics applied to sign languages: there is a strong continuity between gestures and language; lexical units and depicting constructions derive from the same iconic core mechanism of sign creation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikola Dobric

The philosophical and, in a lesser degree, linguistic debate about the notion of names has been raging for a long time. The processes behind naming are presented and explained in various ways. This paper will try to give a new insight into the motivation behind the creation of new names as seen from the linguistics viewpoint. Metaphor, as one of the major sources of motivation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, is the basic form of human conceptualization. The first part of the paper presents the current theories about names. The second part describes the basic principles of cognitive linguistics as related to metaphors. The third part deals with providing the evidence regarding metaphor involvement in original creation of people's names, while the last part of the paper presents examples from the Serbian language.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhilesh Kumar Kondoju ◽  
Revanth Reddy Kontham ◽  
Jinan A. Fiaidhi

<div>A simple stock watcher based on Google Web Toolkit (GWT) as the new technology in the creation of rich AJAX applications using only Java as the programming language, which is later on compiled into pure JavaScript and deployed as a regular web site. The user is able to know and manage stock watcher to be</div><div>updated with the latest changes in stock. We used random data as input as it is a prototype model.</div>


Author(s):  
Hannah Cornwell

This book examines the two generations that spanned the collapse of the Republic and the Augustan period to understand how the concept of pax Romana, as a central ideology of Roman imperialism, evolved. The author argues for the integral nature of pax in understanding the changing dynamics of the Roman state through civil war to the creation of a new political system and world-rule. The period of the late Republic to the early Principate involved changes in the notion of imperialism. This is the story of how peace acquired a central role within imperial discourse over the course of the collapse of the Republican framework to become deployed in the legitimization of the Augustan regime. It is an examination of the movement from the debates over the content of the concept, in the dying Republic, to the creation of an authorized version controlled by the princeps, through an examination of a series of conceptions about peace, culminating with the pax augusta as the first crystallization of an imperial concept of peace. Just as there existed not one but a series of ideas concerning Roman imperialism, so too were there numerous different meanings, applications, and contexts within which Romans talked about ‘peace’. Examining these different nuances allows us insight into the ways they understood power dynamics, and how these were contingent on the political structures of the day. Roman discourses on peace were part of the wider discussion on the way in which Rome conceptualized her Empire and ideas of imperialism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Robert Gnuse

Psalm 104 is a majestic hymn to creation, a dynamic corollary to the more formal presentation of the creation of the world in Genesis 1. Reflection upon some of the passages provides us with insight into the biblical author’s appreciation for nature, an attitude that needs to inspire us in this age of ecological crisis. Though the biblical text is unaware of such an ecological crisis; nonetheless, passages shine forth that can speak to us in our modern age of global warming and environmental collapse.


Cells ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1167
Author(s):  
Manjinder S. Cheema ◽  
Katrina V. Good ◽  
Bohyun Kim ◽  
Heddy Soufari ◽  
Connor O’Sullivan ◽  
...  

The replication independent (RI) histone H2A.Z is one of the more extensively studied variant members of the core histone H2A family, which consists of many replication dependent (RD) members. The protein has been shown to be indispensable for survival, and involved in multiple roles from DNA damage to chromosome segregation, replication, and transcription. However, its functional involvement in gene expression is controversial. Moreover, the variant in several groups of metazoan organisms consists of two main isoforms (H2A.Z-1 and H2A.Z-2) that differ in a few (3–6) amino acids. They comprise the main topic of this review, starting from the events that led to their identification, what is currently known about them, followed by further experimental, structural, and functional insight into their roles. Despite their structural differences, a direct correlation to their functional variability remains enigmatic. As all of this is being elucidated, it appears that a strong functional involvement of isoform variability may be connected to development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-771
Author(s):  
Roland Schäfer

AbstractIn this paper, an alternation in German measure noun phrases is examined under a varying-abstraction perspective. In a specific measure NP construction, the embedded kind-denoting noun either agrees in case with the measure noun (eine Tasse guter Kaffee‘a cup of good coffee’) or it stands in the genitive (eine Tasse guten Kaffees). Each of the two alternants is syntactically similar to a non-alternating construction. I propose a prototype model which assigns a common prototypical meaning to each of the alternants and its corresponding non-alternating construction. Based on this, I argue that lexical, morphosyntactic, and stylistic features help to predict the choice of the alternant. A large corpus study is presented which supports this analysis. However, in addition to the prototype effects, an exemplar effect is also shown to influence the choice, namely the relative frequencies with which lemmas occur in the non-alternating constructions. I argue that allowing both prototype and exemplar effects is more adequate than following radical prototype or exemplar approaches. It is also verified in two experiments that the corpus-derived model corresponds to the behaviour of native speakers. The weak effect size of the experimental validation is discussed in the context of corpus-based cognitive linguistics and the validation of corpus-derived models.


2021 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 61-71
Author(s):  
Carla Ovejas Ramírez

This article discusses hyperbolic markers in modeling hyperbole from the perspective of a scenario-based account of language use within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. In this view, hyperbole is seen as a mapping across two conceptual domains (Peña y Ruiz de Mendoza, 2017), a source domain, here relabeled as the magnified scenario, which contains a hypothetical unrealistic situation based on exaggeration, and a target domain or observable scenario which depicts the real situation addressed by the hyperbolic expression. Since the hypothetical scenario is a magnified version of the observable scenario, the mapping contains source-target matches in varying degrees of resemblance. Within this theoretical context, the article explores resources available to speakers for the construction of magnified scenarios leading to hyperbolic interpretation. Among such resources, we find hyperbole markers and the setting up of domains of reference. Finally, the article also discusses hyperbole blockers, which cancel out the activity of the other hyperbolic meaning construction mechanisms.


Author(s):  
Jessica Kühn ◽  
Claudia Riesmeyer

Social media influencers (SMIs) are taking on new roles in the communication environment of their followers as persuasive agents, opinion leaders, brand endorsers, and role models. Taking a look from the perspective of SMIs as agents in the persuasion attempt and their advertising literacy, our study has three aims. First, we provide insight into SMIs‘ self-perception as opinion-leading brand endorsers. Second, we discuss the extent to which SMIs use this awareness of and knowledge about their role model function for their particular young followers. Finally, we show how SMIs actively construct their media persona and how their relationship with their followers is based around this identity. The results from 15 semi-structured, guideline-based interviews conducted in 2019 with German SMIs working in different subject areas (e.g., fitness, fashion, travel, and family) show that SMIs are advertising literate. SMIs are aware of their multiple roles (understanding of one‘s roles: conceptional dimension), and reflect about their media persona‘s role model function (role interpretation: attitudinal dimension). Therefore, the majority of SMIs create their content and their media persona, as well as actively construct their relationship to their followers, based on their knowledge and awareness (role construction: performance dimension).


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Katalin Reszegi

The paper discusses the cognitive mechanics of metaphorical name-giving with a focus on place names, following an overview of cognitive metaphor theory and the questions of metaphorically used proper nouns. In cognitive linguistics, the use of metaphors is a cognitive mechanism that plays a fundamental role in human thought and understanding, and the creation of our social, cultural and psychological reality. A particular form of this also manifests in name-giving, creating a small but influential category of names. The category of place names also influences the application of this name-giving method: it is generally used in more informal names and name types. The creation of such a name requires the speaker to detach themselves from the conventional norms of direct descriptionand metonymic name-giving, and relies on their lingual creativity and ability to detach themselves from dominant name-giving models. However, names in the category can also be divided into subcategories. Beyond the typical common-noun-based metaphorical name-giving, more complex parallels can also be found, resulting in the associations connecting the names of several nearby locations. Place names can also serve as the base of metaphorical name-giving, supporting the complex meaning of these names. Despite the fact that the majority of metaphorical names are available from contemporary data collection, it is obviously a long-standing and ancient method of name-giving, as it is based on a cognitive mechanics that seem to be as old as humanity itself.


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