Reviewing the properties and prototype structure of metonymy

Building on previous research (Barcelona, 2002, 2003), the author carefully discusses and takes a stand on the issues he finds problematic in the standard cognitive linguistic notion of metonymy. These include, among others, the status of metonymy as a mapping, as a stand-for relationship, as a type of activation, and as a type of “domain highlighting”; prototype-based vs. unitary definitions of metonymy; and the distinction of metonymy from metaphor, “modulation”, “facets”, and active zones. On the basis of his discussion of those issues, he puts forward a technical unitary (“schematic”) notion of metonymy, which he claims to coexist with three tightly interrelated prototype-based notions of metonymy that he proposes: “purely schematic”, “typical”, and “prototypical” metonymies, all parts of a continuum.