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Article In: Metonymic Thinking All the Way Down: From discourse to the lexicon, and beyond
Edited by Carmen Portero-Muñoz, Antonio Barcelona and Almudena Soto Nieto
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 13:1] 2026
► pp. 107–144

Section 2. Metonymy in morphology

Metonymy in morphological recategorization

The case of Spanish body-part verbs

ORCiD logo with link | University of Córdoba
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Abstract
This paper examines metonymy within the grammatical domain of morphology (Janda, L. A. (2011). Metonymy in word formation. Cognitive Linguistics, 22(2), 359–392. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brdar, M. (2017). Metonymy and word-formation: Their interactions and complementation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Gutiérrez Rubio, E. (2021). Metonymy in Spanish word formation. In A. Fábregas, V. Acedo-Matellán, G. Armstrong, M. C. Cuervo, I. Pujol Payet (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of Spanish morphology (pp. 399–415). London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Kos, P., & Gutiérrez Rubio, E. (2026). Arguing for a “broader” view of metonymy in word-formation. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 13(1)., 78–106Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), focusing on Spanish denominal verbs ending in -ear derived from body part nouns (e.g., manosear, pestañear). These verbs illustrate morphological recategorization through an affix that is semantically underspecified, serving primarily to mark a categorial shift. They parallel English denominal verbs formed by conversion, as in “I was anxious to get inside and nose around her house,” where the noun nose functions as a verb.
The referential domain of body parts reflects fundamental human experience, providing a conceptual basis for verb formation and interpretation. As Kövecses and Radden (1998: 60) argue, the ease of creating and processing such verbs stems from common metonymic patterns. Specifically, verbs like manosear and pestañear instantiate a primary metonymy, where a body part stands for the action it performs: mano (“hand”) for touching, pestaña (“eyelash”) for eyelash movement. Both cases exemplify the broader metonymic schema BODY PART FOR ACTION, with hands and eyelashes functioning as Instrument and Theme, respectively.
The analysis draws on dictionary definitions supplemented by corpus data to illustrate authentic usage. Findings suggest that Spanish verbs derived from body part nouns not only reflect cross-linguistic tendencies in the semantic extension of body part terms but also reveal language-internal variation shaped by cultural factors. This study thus contributes to understanding how metonymy motivates morphological processes and highlights the interplay between cognitive mechanisms and linguistic structure.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical preliminaries
    • 2.1Embodiment in linguistic conceptualization
    • 2.2Embodiment and metonymy
  • 3.Methodological issues
  • 4.Metonymy and morphological recategorization: Spanish body-part based verbs in -ear
    • 4.1Analysis of the data
    • 4.2Results and discussion
      • 4.2.1Metonymic extensions
      • 4.2.2Metonymic chains
      • 4.2.3Universals and cultural filter
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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