Linguistics, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2003.
Original scientific paper
High-level modal 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
Lorena Pérez Hernández
; Universidad de La Rioja, Logroño, Departamento de Filologías Modernas, Edificio de Filología
Abstract
has been brought to the fore in recent works by Thornburg and Panther
(1997), Panther and Thornburg (1999), Radden and Kövecses (1999),
Ruiz de Mendoza and Pérez (2001), and Ruiz de Mendoza and Otal
(2002) among others, where the authors analyze the grammatical import
of high-level or generic metonymies. This paper explores the
metonymic basis of several expressions of modality in English and
Spanish. More specifically, we focus on two types of metonymic mapping:
(i) OBLIGATION FOR DESIRE (called NECESSITY FOR MOTIVATION in
Thornburg and Panther 1997), which underlies the understanding of
expressions like I must go, where the modal verb is used to express an
obligation that comes from the speaker; and (ii) POTENTIALITY FOR
ACTUALITY, which motivates English expressions such as I can see the
Thames from my window (‘I see the Thames from my window’) or I
can hear well (‘I hear well’). We have observed that both metonymies
are productive in Spanish as well, but their exploitation in this language
is subject to certain peculiarities. On the one hand, Spanish is sensitive
only to the POTENTIALITY FOR ACTUALITY metonymy in those cases in
which a verb carrying a commissive element is involved. On the other
hand, regarding the OBLIGATION FOR DESIRE mapping, there is a clear
asymmetry between Spanish and English. An example like I must speak
to you, please is better rendered into Spanish as Tengo que hablar contigo,
por favor (‘I have to speak to you, please’). In this sentence, the Spanish modal expression tener que is only formally equivalent to the
English modal have to, but unlike its English counterpart it conveys internal
(or self-imposed) obligation. Finally, we note that, in the domain
of epistemic modality, meaning shifts from probability to usuality, and
we argue for a non-metonymic implicational correlation between these
two modality scales both in English and Spanish.
Keywords
high-level metonymy; deontic modality; epistemic modality; potentiality; motivation; cross-linguistic analysis
Hrčak ID:
31340
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2003.
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