Partitive restrictive modification of names in English: Arguments for their metonymic motivation

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to argue for the role of conceptual metonymy in the motivation of the construction called by Quirk et al. “partitive restrictive modification” (e.g. The young Joyce was already a great writer), where a unitary referent can be figuratively split into a set of different entities. After dealing with a number of introductory issues in sections 1-3, the bulk of the paper is constituted by section 4, where the author argues systematically for the claim that the construction is motivated by these factors: (1) A purely conceptual, pre-linguistic metonymy, where the whole of the standard referent of the name (joyce in the above example) is mapped onto one of the referent’s active zones; these active zones are relations involving the referent (joyce when being young, joyce when marrying Nora Barnacle, etc.); (2) the analogy of the construction to non-partitive restrictive modification on names.