Jezikoslovlje, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2003.
Izvorni znanstveni članak
High-level action metonymies in English and Spanish
Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez
orcid.org/0000-0002-1200-2850
; Universidad de La Rioja, Logroño, Departamento de Filologías Modernas, Edificio de Filología
Olga Isabel Díez Velasco
; Universidad de La Rioja, Logroño, Departamento de Filologías Modernas, Edificio de Filología
Sažetak
In this paper we postulate the existence of two high-level metonymies,
ACTION FOR PROCESS and ACTION FOR (ASSESSED) RESULT, that we believe
correlate respectively with cases of the causative/inchoative alternation
and the middle construction. In our view, for a full analysis of
the semantics of these two kinds of construction, it is necessary to take
into account the existence of an underlying action frame with an implicit
agent; however, the action is linguistically presented as a noncontrolled
event. We observe that these two high-level metonymies are
also exploited productively in Spanish, although with different realization
patterns. The closest Spanish parallel to the English inchoative and
middle constructions is the so-called reflex passive, whose grammatical
status remains controversial. We agree with Alarcos (1994) and
Maldonado (1999) in their claim that the reflex passive does not display
the inherent passive features, so that cases of this construction may be
equated to other reflexive constructions. In them se is not a clitic but a
reflexive pronoun, the subject being coreferential with it. This insight is
further substantiated by the fact that the addition of an agentive complement
with por (‘by’) often yields fairly infelicitous examples. While
in English both kinds of metonymy are instantiated by the reduction of
an argument position of the predicate, in Spanish—where the reduction
of an argument position is impossible—the goal is expressed separately
through the reflexive pronoun se, the true agent is omitted, and the
grammatical subject takes over this role.
Ključne riječi
predicational metonymy; causative/inchoative construction; middle construction; reflex pasive construction
Hrčak ID:
31341
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.9.2003.
Posjeta: 1.960 *