| Popis: |
This paper aims to reveal the metonymic basis of a Japanese transitive construction known as Intermediate Causative Construction (ICC). The semantic characterizations of ICC are shown by the comparison of two examples in (1). (1) a. Biyoushi-wa seito-no kami-wo kit-ta. stylist-TOP student-POS hair-ACC cut-PAST ‘The stylist cut the student’s hair.’b. Hana-wa biyousitsu-de kami-wo kit-ta. Hana-TOP hairsalon-LOC hair-ACC cut-PAST‘Hana had her hair cut in the hair salon.’(1a) and (1b) give different interpretation related to how we understand the meaning of the verb kit-ta. The interpretation of (1a) is that the referent of the subject Biyoushi corresponds to the agent who cut the student’s hair. In contrast, in (1b), the referent of the subject Hana is understood as the person who asked other person (typically a stylist) to cut her hair. Although the causative action is encoded as a single event, the meaning of (1b) involves an intermediary agent, which semantically characterizes ICC. This paper proposes that the difference of interpretation in (1) is a manifestation of a metonymic process in the action chain. Metonymy is a basic cognitive strategy to express our thought effectively. A metonymic expression refers to only a salient entity, but the precise meaning is understood by inference based on a contiguous relationship. In the case of ICC, the metonymic inference is motivated by a contiguous relationship between two events: a transitive action and an intermediate causation. This paper proposed good syntactic and semantic evidence indicating that ICC is a manifestation of principles of cognitive salience, and formulated four types of those principles, which relate to the number of participants, kinesis, aspect, volitionality. These parameters are basic characterizations of transitive events, which are likely to be recognized as ‘typical’ events, that is, a conceptual class of highly salient events. In communication, we cannot do without metonymy. This paper illustrated this general principle holds true even when we interpret a transitive expression, and stated that effectiveness and pervasiveness of ICC are based on our cognitive ability of metonymy. |
