The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics

[ Article ]

Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 21, No. 0, pp.71-86

ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)

Print publication date 31 Jan 2021

Received 04 Jan 2021 Revised 14 Feb 2021 Accepted 25 Feb 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.21..202102.71

A Difference in Non-truthfulness between Metaphor and Metonymy

Yoon-kyoung Joh

Professor, Mokpo Nat’l University, Tel: 061-450-2122 ykjoh@hotmail.com

© 2021 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

For the non-truthfulness of metaphor, a delinking mechanism has previously been proposed. For that of metonymy, an implicit modifier-head construction has previously been advanced. Based on these two different mechanisms, this paper addresses a contrast that Warren (2003) observes. That is, a non-metaphoric reading and a metaphoric reading cannot be VP-conjoined sharing the same target subject. However, a non-metonymic reading and a metonymic reading can be VP-conjoined in a sentence with the same subject. We have explained this contrast with the fact that the delinking process for metaphors brings about a semantic contradiction when a non-metaphoric reading and a metaphoric reading are conjoined while the implicit head approach to metonymy does not ordinarily evoke a contradiction when a non-metonymic reading and a metonymic reading are conjoined even though there are some cases where a contradiction can indeed occur when the two readings are coordinated.

Keywords:

metaphor, metonymy, delinking, modifier-head construction, conjunction

Acknowledgments

I thank all the reviewers of this paper for their insightful comments. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A5A2A03049825).

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