Metonymy, Grammar and Communication

Abstract

In view of the needs of contemporary metonymy theory, the book has the following two main goals: 1 It attempts to characterise metonymy, i.e. to find a reliable set of criteria allowing us to distinguish metonymy from related semantic phenomena 2 The book considers the connections between metonymy and some grammatical phenomena, on the one hand, and between metonymy and so-called pragmatic inference, on the other hand. The book also addresses several other matters of importance within the current debate on metonymy such as its boundaries with literal uses of language, the problem of distinguishing metonymy from synecdoche, the interaction between metonymy and metaphor, and the complex issue of building a systematic taxonomy of metonymy types.