Generating Polysemy: Metaphor and Metonymy

In this paper I want to show why metaphor and metonymy are, on the one hand side, two distinct types of generating new meanings for existing expressions, and why, on the other hand, there are many cases which can either been viewed as metaphor or as metonymy, without the one way of understanding excluding the other. After having given a general characterization of metaphoric and metonymic concept formation as part of the general method of concept formation I shall show how two different kinds of perspective change are involved in the metaphoric and in the metonymic process, respectively. Metaphors involve a crossing between perspectives that select similarities (identical features) and differences under each of the perspectives chosen; metonymies involve a crossing between perspectives directed towards contiguous parts of situations and objects. We will start with concept formation, as it is presented in Bartsch (1998), where metaphors are generated on the experiential level of concept formation, as well as on the theoretical level of linguistically explicated concepts.. On the experiential level, linguistically expressed concepts are equivalence classes in stabilizing series of growing sets of satisfaction situations for the use of these expressions, which are collected under a perspective of attention. The equivalence is determined by the common internal similarity of the sets of situations, under the relevant perspective. On the theoretical level, linguistically expressed concepts are defined by the characteristic semantic distribution of the expression, i.e. the sentential complements of the expression used as a general term in universally quantified sentences. Thus the conjunction of the predications that generally hold with respect to the term make up the features characteristic for the concept in a theory, i.e. in a coherent set of general sentences held true. Concepts on this level are theoretical concepts in a broad sense; they are linguistically explicated concepts, i.e. explicated within this coherent set of general sentences in which they are used as general terms. Not yet stabilized concepts are called " quasi-concepts " ; a stabilized concept can again become a quasi-concept when it becomes destabilized by massive data, or data enhanced by special importance and great normative impact enacted in the situations of use of the respective expression. Concept formation consists in ordering growing sets of data, especially satisfaction situations for expressions, according to similarity and/or contiguity under perspectives into stabilizing sequences which are the (quasi-)concepts that form the basic experiential conceptual structure. These two …