Adjacency transfer. Metonymy: Definition

The term “metonymy” comes from a Greek word meaning “renaming”. This is a path, which is a transfer of the value of adjacency - occasional or regular - to the name of a particular class of objects, or to a certain individual of them into an object or another class associated with it by involvement in a specific situation or adjacency.

What names can be transferred

The basis of metonymy are spatial, conceptual, eventual, logical, and syntagmatic relationships between certain categories related to reality and its reflection in the human mind, fixed in the concrete meanings of words - between persons, objects, actions, phenomena, processes, events, social institutions, time, place, etc.

The name can be transferred:

1) from the container to the volume of contents or to the contents itself, for example: “glass” - “measure of bulk 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, place to an event connected with it, or the totality of its inhabitants: “The whole village laughed at him”, “road” - “trip”, “path laid for movement”, “trip time”;

3) from a specific action on its result, an object involved in the action (tool, object, subject) or place: “stop” is both the place where the transport stops and a certain action, “whistle” is a device for whistling and the act of whistling;

5) from the form of expression of a certain content or its specific, material embodiment to the content as a whole: an “interesting book” refers to the content, and a “thick book” refers to the subject;

6) transfer of the meaning of adjacency from science, the branch of knowledge to its subject and vice versa: “grammar” is both the “structure of the language” and the “section of linguistics”;

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

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

9) from part to whole and vice versa: “pear” - “fruit” and “tree” (transferring a name from part to whole is called a synecdoch - 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 a 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-building types and polysemantic words, often combining different types of meanings: event, sign, subject (concrete and abstract). For example, action names are used regularly to refer to some resulting object (“composition”, “work”, “story”, “decision”, “construction”).

Suffix Polysemia

If the metonymic transfer is regularly carried out within the word-formation type, its consequence may be a polysemy of suffix, and not the basis (compare, for example, the meaning of such verbal suffixes as -enie, -anie). The association of some objects by adjacency, as well as by the logical proximity of concepts, turns into a cohesion of meanings. This kind of metonymy serves certain purposes - nominative, and also contributes to the development of lexical language means.

What gives rise to metonymy

The mechanisms of various syntagmatic transformations give rise to this pathway. The metonymy that arises regularly on the basis of a sentence or phrase, which is the result of the so-called elliptical reduction 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: “There are two Van Goghs in the museum” (meaning “two paintings Van Gogh "), but it cannot be said:" On one Van Gogh a young woman is depicted.

Context link

The most firm connection with the context is such a metonymy (see examples in Russian below), in which the designation of a certain situation, based on a predicate, is reduced only to the component of the value of the subject: "What's wrong with you? -" Heart (head, teeth, throat) "- in the meaning of" the heart hurts (head, teeth, throat). This usage is limited to specific semantic and syntactic contexts. So, some figurative meaning (examples - “heart”, “head”) cannot be combined with procedural verbs and adjectives that determine the course of the disease and the nature of the pain. We cannot say “a strong (aching, sharp) heart” or “a heart has become aggravated (aggravated, intensified)”. In this case, the adjacency transfer does not create a meaningful content of the word independent of the context. It serves as a means of revealing semantic variants of its use. The figurative meaning, examples of which were indicated above, is closely related to the context.

How metonymy is used

Used metonymy (synecdoha most often) as a technique for some situational nomination of an object according to its external individualizing detail. We illustrate our point. Let’s take such sentences with metonymy as: “Hey, beard!”, “The hat is reading the newspaper.” Such use is analogous to its derivatives denoting belonging - a substantiated adjective and 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.

Social group designation

If the detail called metonymy is typical of many individuals, then it can be rooted in the language and as a designation of some social group, for example, the word “bast shoe” can indicate the peasants of Russia in the pre-revolutionary period. But such a metonymy is devoid of denotative (semantic) stability. In various historical contexts, the name "beard" was used to refer to sages, peasants, boyars, elders, as well as a certain group of young people. Metonymy, the examples in the Russian language of which we have just cited, is very common.

The syntactic positions of metonymy

The use of this trail (synecdochi, first of all) mainly to indicate the subject of speech combines it with the syntactic positions of the subject, treatment and additions. As a predicate, situational transfer of adjacency values ​​is uncommon because it does not perform any characterizing function. If metonymy is used in the predicate, it is transformed into a metaphor, for example, “hat” is “muddler”, “galosh” is “ruin, decrepit person”. The use of names in the sense of partiality in a predicate, which usually serves the purpose of subjecting the subject, is not considered in most cases as adjacency transfer. We illustrate our point. Let's take an example: “He was a rebellious mind” - a characteristic refers to a specific aspect of a person, more precisely, to his intellectual character.

There is no synecdochus also used in any existential sentences or their equivalents that introduce the subject into the narrative world. For example, we cannot begin the narration with words such as: Once upon a time there was (one, some) little red riding hood. "This use is perceived not as a designation of a person, but as an embodiment of an object.