Two Kinds of Metonymy

TWO KINDS OF METONYMY David Stallard BBN Systems and Technologies 70 Fawcett Street Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Intemet: stallard@bbn.com ABSTRACT We propose a distinction between two kinds of metonymy: "referential" metonymy, in which the refer- ent of an NP is shifted, and "predicative" metonymy, in which the referent of the NP is unchanged and the ar- gument place of the predicate is shifted instead. Exam- ples are, respectively, "The hamburger is waiting for his check" and "Which airlines fly from Boston to Denver". We also show that complications arise for both types of metonymy when multiple coercing predicates are con- sidered. Finally, we present implemented algorithms handling these complexities that generate both types of metonymic reading, as well as criteria for choosing one type of metonymic reading over another. 1 INTRODUCTION The phenomenon of semantic coercion, or "metonymy", is quite a common one in natural language. In metonymy, the actual argument of a predicate is not the literal argument, but is instead implicit and related to the literal argument through an implicit binary rela- tion. For example, in the following utterances, taken from Lakoff and Johnson (1980): (1) The ham sandwich is waiting for his check (2) Nixon bombed Hanoi it is not literally the ham sandwich which is doing the walling, but rather the person who ordered it, and not literally Nixon who is doing the bombing, but rather the pilots under his command. The noun phrase - "The ham sandwich", "Nixon" - is said to be "coerced" through an implicit binary relation to a related object which is the actual argument of the predicate. Perhaps the most familar definition of metonymy from the literature is that it is a figure of speech in which the speaker is "using one entity to refer to an- other that is related to it" (Lakoff and Johnson,1980). This definition is quite commonly held in one form or another. (For example, see (Fass,1991), where it is directly quoted; also similar definitions in (Puste- jovsky,1991), (Hobbs,1988)). But what does it really mean? Does it mean that the coerced noun phrase is actually an indirect reference to an object different from its literal referent? If so, then we might expect other linguistic data to support this. For example, we might expect subsequent anaphora to agree with the "real" referent. And indeed, in the following dialogue the intra-sentential pronoun "his" and the extra-sentential "he" both agree with the indirect reference to the customer, not the the literal sandwich: (3) The ham sandwich is waiting for his check He is getting a little impatient But compare the dialogues (4) Nixon bombed Hanoi. He wanted to force the Communists to negotiate (4') Nixon bombed Hanoi *They sang all the way back to Saigon The dialogue (4) is quite natural, while in (4'), the use of "they" to refer to the bomber crews seems ruled out - the reverse of what the indirect reference view would predict. A second problem with the indirect reference view is found in certain …

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