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Conceptual Metonymy: Methodological, theoretical, and descriptive issues
Edited by Olga Blanco-Carrión, Antonio Barcelona and Rossella Pannain
[Human Cognitive Processing 60] 2018
► pp. 185–204

Chapter 7
How metonymy motivates constructions

The case of monoclausal if-only P constructions in English

| University of Częstochowa

This chapter shows how constructional metonymy, whereby a part Y of a grammatical construction X is used to access the whole construction X, leads to the emergence of new grammatical constructions. Such metonymically motivated constructions are called dependent constructions, as opposed to the autonomous constructions they originally targeted. The construction I consider in detail is the monoclausal if-only P construction. I attempt to demonstrate that, contrary to Dancygier and Sweetser’s (2005), there is no single if-only P construction but, rather, a network of at least four if-only P constructions, which differ in their time reference, epistemic stance and illocutionary force. My proposal shows that the emergence of such dependent constructions is usually motivated by the familiar part-for-whole metonymy.

Keywords: conditional sentence, construction, constructional metonymy, epistemic stance, if-only construction, illocutionary force
Article outline
  • 1.Preliminaries: Conceptual and constructional metonymy in grammar
  • 2.Dancygier and Sweetser’s account of the if-only construction
    • 2.1 if-only P, Q construction
    • 2.2Monoclausal if-only P construction
  • 3.Objections to Dancygier and Sweetser’s analysis
    • 3.1Objection 1: There is no single biclausal if-only P, Q construction
      • 3.1.1 If-only P, Q1
      • 3.1.2 If-only P, Q2
      • 3.1.3 If-only P, Q3
      • 3.1.4 If-only P, Q4
        • 3.1.4.1 If-only P, Q4A
        • 3.1.4.2 If-only P, Q4B
    • 3.2Objection 2: There is no single monoclausal if-only P construction
      • 3.2.1 If-only P1 (metonymically motivated by If-only P, Q1)
      • 3.2.2 If-only P2 (metonymically motivated by If-only P, Q2)
      • 3.2.3 If-only P3 (metonymically motivated by If-only P, Q3)
      • 3.2.4 If-only P4 (metonymically motivated by If-only P, Q4)
    • 3.3Objection 3: The condition is minimally sufficient
    • 3.4Objection 4: I wish performatives are not synonymous with if-only P
    • 3.5Objection 5: Not just a wish but a range of speech acts
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.60.07bie
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