The Study of the function of Metaphtonymy in the Semantic Structure of Idiomatic Expressions in the Framework of Cognitive Semantics

Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Morteza Dastlan

Linguistics Department, Humanities Faculty, PNU University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jlkd.2022.72644.1058

Abstract

Idiomatic expressions are groups of words whose meanings are not simply predictable by knowing their constituent vocabulary and grammar. This paper studies a specific kind of idioms from the viewpoint of cognitive semantics and on the basis of Fillmore et al's typology of idiomatic expressions (1988) and Goossens' opinions on metaphtonymy (1990), in order to determine the function of metaphtonymy in semantic structure of idiomatic expressions. Metaphtonymy is the output of simultaneous presence of metaphor and metonymy and their mutual interaction in the semantic structure of an utterance. The studied idioms are selected from popular body expressions with familiar lexical items within familiar grammatical patterns with substantive structure. In this study, two basic findings are obtained: First, beside metaphor and metonymy, metaphtonymy is also frequent in the semantic structure of body idioms. Second, the metaphtonymies in these idioms are of the type "metonymy within metaphor" in which the metonym is inside the metaphor i.e. the metaphor paves the way for the appearance of metonymy. These findings can be dealt with in a bottom-up approach in which a metaphor primarily conceptualizes the abstract function or property of an organ of the body in terms of a concrete conceptual domain; then, within that metaphor, an appropriate metonym replaces that abstract function or property with the name of the attributed organ. In this way, an absolutely abstract concept in the bottom is developed into an overall concrete concept.

Keywords

• Idiomatic expressions
• Metaphor
• Metonymy
• Metaphtonymy
• Cognitive Semantics

20.1001.1.20087233.1400.13.2.11.2

Main Subjects

• Semantics

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