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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. 145–170

Section 3. Metonymy in the lexicon

Conceptual metonymy in the use of cardinal numbers in Spanish and English

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Almería
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Córdoba
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
The article explores the relationship between conceptual metonymy and the use of cardinal numbers in Spanish and English. Real instances of language have been used to describe this conceptual relation. The metonymic mappings identified in the use of some cardinal numbers exhibit different levels of conceptual organization in terms of meaning and form. The two main metonymies that we observed in the semantics of the expressions analyzed are cardinal for co-occurring numerical entity and cardinal for co-occurring non-numerical entity. The expressions studied use the domain of numerical concepts as source in order to arrive at two slightly different but similar domains of experience which are co-occurring numerical entity and co-occurring non-numerical entity. Furthermore, the form of some of the expressions analyzed is motivated by the high-level metonymy salient part of a form for the whole form.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Metonymy and cardinal numbers
    • 3.1Numerical entity for concomitant numerical entity
      • 3.1.1Quantitative numerical senses
      • 3.1.2Non-quantitative numerical senses
    • 3.2Numerical entity for concomitant non-numerical entity
      • 3.2.111-S and 9/11
      • 3.2.2En los + cardinal/in the + cardinal, in his/her… and cardinal + derivative suffix
      • 3.2.3Other meanings expressed by derivative adjectives and número 1/number 1 for expressions related to the domains of property and condition
      • 3.2.469 and G-X
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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