Metonymy triggers syntactic argument alternation: vehicle for conductor metonymy as a constraint on lexical-constructional integration

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the role of metonymy in determining a syntactic argument alternation (“conductor-vehicle alternation”) which occurs in English and Portuguese: o piloto acelerou a Ferrari “the driver speeded up the Ferrari”/a Ferrari acelerou “the Ferrari speeded up/sped away”. Since the verbs in the conductor-vehicle alternation have conductor and vehicle arguments (controller and controlled entities), a metonymic process can occur, allowing the vehicle expression to provide access to the conductor participant. To explain how metonymy allows a verb with two participants to be integrated into a construction with a single argument, we assume that metonymy gathers information about both entities involved; the vehicle expression provides mental access to both vehicle and conductor (“fusion”). We also discuss cognitive and pragmatic factors involving the choice of a construction over another. Constructions with vehicle expressions as subject are used when the vehicle is salient or the conductor is unknown. This also explains why dirigir “drive” does not alternate in Portuguese, contrarily to prediction and differently from English drive. We provide a comparative account of the behavior of this verb in both languages. Dirigir, differently from drive, conceptualizes semantic components incompatible with a situation in which the agent/conductor is not salient or is unknown. This research adds to the ongoing body of literature on the role of metonymy in grammar and is a contribution to the understanding of the metonymic process, as a fusion, and also to argument alternation processes and lexical-constructional integration.