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5 - Prominence in Noun-to-Verb Conversion

from Part I - Lexico-Semantic Aspects of Complex Words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Heike Baeskow
Edited by
Lívia Körtvélyessy  and
Pavol Štekauer
Lívia Körtvélyessy
Affiliation:
P. J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
Pavol Štekauer
Affiliation:
P. J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
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Summary

While conversion is assumed to be a word-formation process, at least in lexicalist theories, Dirven (1999) describes it as event-schema metonymy in a cognitive framework. Successive works suggest that this approach, which was initiated by Kövecses & Radden (1998), has not been further pursued beyond cognitive grammar. Only recently, Bauer (2018) resumed Dirven’s line of reasoning and provided convincing arguments in favour of a metonymic description of noun-to-verb conversion. The aim of the present article is to elucidate the asymmetry involved in event-schema metonymy. Since the salient participant is selected from a set of equals (i.e. from a set of participants competing to be selected as the metonymic vehicle), the question arises of what makes this participant – which contrary to the principle of anthropocentrism is not typically the Agent – stand out against its competitors. Based on selected denominal verbs especially from English, but also from Mandarin Chinese, it will be shown that this asymmetry is optimally accounted for by the abstract principle of ‘prominence’ in the sense of Himmelmann and Primus (2015) and Jasinskaja et al. (2015).

Keywords

noun-to-verb conversionevent-schema metonymyprominencereference metonymy
Type
Chapter
Information
Complex Words
Advances in Morphology
 , pp. 82 - 99
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

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