Persian Bahuvrihi Compounds: The operation of metonymy and metaphor

AbstractThe present study aims towards investigating the conceptual motivation underlying the creation and understanding of Persian Bahuvrihi compounds. It is also trying to specify the conceptual types of these compounds according to the metonymical and metaphorical patterns of operation and interaction. In so doing, we rely on the model proposed by Ruiz de Mendoza and Diez Velasco (2002) which accounts for basic types of metonymy and different patterns of conceptual interaction. As for data, we approach a total of 60 Persian non-verbal behuvrihi compounds. The analysis reveals that in terms of the underlying conceptual pattern, Persian bahuvrihi compounds fall into three main groups: 1) compounds resulting from the operation of a single conceptual metonymy (source-in-target), 2) compounds resulting from metonymic interaction, and 3) compounds resulting from the interaction of metaphor and metonymy. In the meantime, given that that the conceptualization of bahuvrihi compounds resulting from metonymic interaction may activate two, three, or more consecutive conceptual metonymies, this group of bahuvrihi compounds includes subpatterns in terms of the number and type of the operative metonymies. Moreover, compounds that represent the conceptual interaction of metaphor and metonymy are classified into two subgroups depending on whether or not the source and target domain of the underlying metaphor are metonymic. These compounds exemplify the ones that result from the metonymic mapping of the target domain of the metaphor and those resulting from the metonymic mapping of both the source and target domains of the metaphor. The results of the research implicitly indicate that the process of the formation of bahuvrihi compounds in Persian is not random, but follows systematic and specific conceptual patterns.Keywords: Bahuvrihi Compounds, Metonymy, Metaphor, Conceptual Interaction IntroductionCompound words have long been the subject of linguistic studies due to their frequency and prevalence among the languages of the world (Dressler, 2006) as well as their idiosyncratic structural and semantic features (Scalise & Vogel 2010) (e.g., Jespersen, 1954; Warren, 1978; Bauer, 1979; Leiber, 1980; Ryder, 1994; Booij, 2009; Diyanati & Rezaei, 2022). However, Panini's semantic classification (sixth century BC) for Sanskrit compounds can be considered as one of the first attempts. Based on the dis/associative relation between the meaning of the whole compound and the meaning of the constituents, Panini divided compound words into four groups: avyayibhavas (the association of the whole meaning with the first component), tatpuruṣa (the association of the whole meaning with the second component), bhuvrihi (the dissociation of the whole meaning with both components), and dvandva (the association of the whole meaning with both components) (Ogawa, 2005:9). Of the terms Panini proposed to refer to each of these classes, only the term "bahuvrihi compounds" is still observed in the literature on compound words. In bahuvrihi compounds, there is a kind of descriptive relationship between the two parts of the word, but the whole compound refers to a part of its reference, i.e., a person or something that has the feature denoted by the components. In a sense, there is a kind of property relationship between the reference of the compound word and the component described in the structure of the compound word. Likewise, in bahuvrihi compounds, despite the existence of some kind of descriptive relationship between the components, the compound denotes someone/something that has the feature described by the whole compound, bahuvrihis are often considered with no semantic head and their interpretation and conceptual motivation is one of the main challenges of studies focused on the semantic aspects of compound words. In this regards, some researchers (Jespersen, 1954; Warren, 2001; Booij, 1992; Lieber, 2004) maintain that bahuvrihi compounds are clear examples of figurative expressions representing the operation of part for whole metonymy. Barcelona (2008) took the debate one step further by addressing whether only conceptual metonymy justifies the conceptualization of bahuvrihi compounds or other conceptual processes are also involved. The findings of his study not only support those of earlier studies regarding the function of metonymy (characteristic property for category), but also indicate that the characteristic property that is attributed to the entity via part for whole metonymy may be conceptualized non-metaphorically and non-metaphorically (literally), metonymically, or metaphorico-metonymically (i.e., through the interaction of metaphor and metonymy). Although the role played by metaphor and metonymy in the semantics of bahuvrihi compounds has been explicitly acknowledged, different patterns and sub-patterns of conceptual interaction of cognitive mechanisms (i.e., patterns of metonymic interaction and patterns of metaphorico-metonymic interaction), as one of the primary concerns of cognitive linguists, have not been into account in previous research on the underlying conceptual motivations of bahuvrihi compounds. Given the importance of the patterns of conceptual interaction in semantic explanations, the present study seeks to analyze the conceptual motivation underlying the creation and understanding of Persian non-verbal bahuvrihi compounds and to specify the conceptual types of these compounds according to the patterns of operation and interaction of metonymy and metaphor. Seeing that among the proposed models for metonymy and conceptual interaction of cognitive mechanisms, only Ruiz DeMendoza and Diaz Velasco's (2002) model focuses on the relationship between the metonymic expression and its reference and gives a comprehensive picture of the types of conceptual interaction patterns (Littlemore, 2015), the aforementioned model has been employed to specify the conceptual types of Persian bahuvrihi compounds. Materials and MethodsTo compile a list of Persian bahuvrihi compounds, Sokhan Comprehensive Dictionary (2003) and earlier studies on compound words in Persian were consulted and a total number of 362 non-verbal bahuvrihi compounds were extracted. Next, a total number of sixty compounds were randomly taken out of the collected data to zoom in. The extracted compounds refer to various types of entities (e.g., human, animal, etc.), and represent different morpho-syntactic structures, including adjective-noun, noun-adjective, noun-noun, and quantifier-noun. All sixty bahuvrihi compounds were analyzed within Ruiz DeMendoza and Diaz Velasco's (2002) model in order to answer the research questions. Discussion of Results and ConclusionsThe detailed analysis of the sample reveals that in terms of the underlying conceptualization pattern (i.e., the operation and interaction of conceptual metaphor and metonymy), Persian bahuvrihi compounds can be divided into three main groups: 1) compounds resulting from the operation of a single conceptual metonymy, 2) compounds resulting from metonymic interaction, and 3) compounds resulting from the interaction of metaphor and metonymy.In the first group of bahuvrihi compounds, a single source-in-target metonymy (i.e., characteristic property for entity) operates over the whole compound word and maps the characteristic property conceptualized by the components of the compound onto a group of entities (e.g., âble-ru and râst-dast).The second group of Persian bahuvrihi compounds manifest the interaction of two, three, or more conceptual metonymies. Three mains sub-categories can be distinguished here based on the number and type of the operative metonymies: a) compounds resulting from double conceptual metonymies, wherein the first metonymy conceptualizes a distinctive feature and the second one maps that feature onto the whole category (e.g., hezâr-pâ and sâde-del). Note, the two operating metonymies are either two source-in-target metonymies or a target-in-source metonymy followed by a source-in-target metonymy; b) compounds resulting from triple conceptual metonymies, wherein the first two metonymies operating over the components conceptualize a characteristic property and pave the way for the operation of a final source-in-target metonymy that maps the characteristic property onto a category of entities with that property (e.g., sabok-maqz and del-nâzok). These bahuvrihi compounds may also be classified into two sub-categories depending on the type of the metonymies operating over the components; and c) compounds resulting from multiple conceptual metonymies, wherein the conceptualization process entails the consecutive operation of more than three conceptual metonymies. Firstly, three or more metonymies operate over the components or the whole compound and conceptualize a characteristic property; lastly, a source-in-target metonymy maps the property onto a category (e.g., riš-sefid and sabok-sar).In the third group of Persian bahuvrihi compounds, the conceptualization process represents the simultaneous operation of metaphor and metonymy. Compounds manifesting this pattern may be divided into two main sub-categories depending on whether the source and target domain of the underlying metaphor are metonymic or not: i) compounds resulting from the metonymic mapping of the target domain of the metaphor (e.g., abru-kamân); and ii) compounds resulting from the metonymic mapping of both the source and target domains of the metaphor (e.g., boz-del).Given that compounds in the first group evoke only one conceptual metonymy in their pattern of conceptualization, their meaning construction is simpler and more transparent. Consequently, it seems that the comprehension of the meaning in these compounds is easier and requires less processing time (Libben et al., 2003). In contrast, the construction of meaning in compounds obeying the pattern of metonymic interaction is more creative (Benczes, 2006) and more compl