The Inference Mechanism Of Metonymy

The research of metonymy goes through a long way from traditional rhetoric to modern cognitive linguistics.The purpose of this study is mainly to observe the inferential mechanism of metonymy in human’s mind.In this thesis,we mainly study the inference mechanism of metonymy at the cognitive and pragmatic aspects.After reviewing previous theories concerned with it,we find that few scholars study the inference mechanism from the combination of Spreading Activation Model and the matrix domain view.Thus,the present thesis makes a tentative study on the theoretical framework of inference mechanism of metonymy based on Chen Xianglan and Shen Tujing’s(2008)cognitive pragmatic inference model of metonymy and combined with Spreading Activation Model and the matrix domain view.Through the research,we try to develop Chen Xianglan and Shen Tujing’s(2008)cognitive pragmatic inference model of metonymy into a whole mechanism and apply the inferential mechanism to the explanation for more detailed examples of metonymy from Chinese Idiom Competition to testify this mechanism.In addition,we also try to explore some other possible metonymic phenomena which appeared in Chinese Idiom Competition that our integrated mechanism is unable to explain and by this way,we can supplement the mechanism.This thesis manages to answer three research questions:(1)What types of metonymy do the idioms in Chinese Idiom Competition involve?(2)What is the inference mechanism of metonymy in the successful cases and how does it work?(3)What features do the metonymic inference of idiom in Chinese idioms Competition reflect?We first discuss the definition of metonymy from different perspectives,and finally demonstrate our definition of metonymy.In order to improve the mechanism discussed,we analysis 38 successful metonymic cases collected from Chinese Idiom Competition by applying the mechanism.We first divide them into different types and then analyze each type.Finally,we discuss the rules of 38 cases and show some findings from these 38 cases.