Metonymisation: Three Levels of Refocusing

Common proposals for classifying metonyms build on the contiguity of the meaning of a metonym compared to its original meaning. In contrast, this article offers a model of metonymisation that focuses on the cognitive underpinnings and sees metonymisation as an attentional process. By using event structure as a framework, we present a cognitive model of events that consists of four elements: actor, patient, force vector and results vector. We propose that metonymisation can be accounted for on three levels. The first level involves shifts of attention within event elements; the second level shifts between event elements; and the third level shifts between entire events and their components.