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

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 .