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Article published In:
Living Metaphors and Metonymies
Edited by Mario Brdar and Rita Brdar-Szabó
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 20:1] 2022
► pp. 130–155

Attribute transfer

The figurative interpretation of shifted modifiers

| University of Hamburg

The rhetorical trope hypallage, here called Attribute Transfer (AT), has been exploited artistically and creatively since antiquity in poetic and narrative discourse, but it is also used in ordinary language. This study focuses on modifier-noun constructions in which the prenominal modifier (attribute) is “shifted” from one position to another – a “transfer” that triggers metonymic interpretations. AT constitutes a violation of the iconically motivated proximity principle (Givón 2001) according to which the conceptual and functional closeness of linguistic units is mirrored in their morphosyntactic structure. The principle of proximity competes with metonymic motivation – the latter prevailing at the expense of the former. An interesting structural parallelism exists between AT and the shift of the negator not from its “logical” position to another syntactic slot (‘neg-transportation’), which again exhibits a violation of the proximity principle. The article concludes with some suggestions for further research, especially cross-linguistic and typological investigations.

Keywords: iconicity, hypallage, metonymy, modifier-noun constructions, neg-transportation, structural parallelism, violations of proximity principle
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Some literary examples of Attribute Transfer
  • 3.Attribute Transfer in ordinary language
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2Compositional vs. metonymically interpreted ModN constructions
      • 3.2.1Healthy person vs. healthy diet
      • 3.2.2Fasting person vs. fasting test
      • 3.2.3Drunken soldier vs. drunken spree: Assigning human attributes to events
      • 3.2.4Quiet and relaxed cups of coffee
      • 3.2.5Is a foreign correspondent a foreigner?
  • 4.A conflict between two cognitive parameters: Iconicity vs. metonymy
  • 5.Functions of hypallage
  • 6.Conclusion and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00104.pan
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