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Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 15:1 (2017) ► pp.102–120

Metonymy in numerals

| Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, Italy

By adopting a synchronic/diachronic perspective, the study addresses the role of metonymy in the representation of numerical quantity. This can be observed in: (a) the motivation relating individual numeral forms, as well as the internal organization of the whole numeral sequence, to non-numeric entities involved in actual quantifying procedures; (b) the phenomenon by which certain salient numerosities function as reference points (Langacker, 1993) for other numerical representations within the functional/conceptual domain (Barcelona, 2011) of numerical quantity. First, a metonymic interpretation of a small group of numerals from different linguistic areas is proposed. Subsequently, the study focuses on a class of collective numerals in contemporary standard Italian that are derived from cardinals by means of affixation with -ino. The analysis of these word formations is aimed at demonstrating that metonymic mapping is a prerequisite for derivation, and that the mapping is based on privileged conceptual/pragmatic functions within the domain of numerosity.

Keywords: metonymy, numerals, collective numerals, word formation, derivation, Italian, pragmatic function, functional/conceptual domain, semantics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Non-numeric/numeric metonymic associations
    • 2.1Body parts as sources
    • 2.2Other non-numeric sources
  • 3.Numeric-numeric metonymic associations: -ino collective numerals in Italian
    • 3.1The semantic contribution of derivational suffix -ino
    • 3.2Salient numerosities as reference points
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora


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Published online: 4 September 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.15.1.05pan
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