Taking stock of figurative language and grammar: Results and prospects

Traditionally, rhetoric and grammar have been thought of as distinct components in the overall architecture of language. This separation was already inherent in the medieval trivium, which comprised the three disciplines grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In this article, it is argued that metaphor and metonymy, here viewed as modes of thought, have an impact on grammatical, i.e. morphosyntactic, form and structure. Four case studies are presented that provide support for this hypothesis. Specifically, it is shown that metonymies are exploited to varying degrees in different languages. In the extreme case, a metonymy that is productive in one language may be completely blocked in another language. Finally, the significance of cross-linguistic comparisons of metaphor and metonymy exploitation for language typology is emphasized.