WHEN ONE IS NOT ENOUGH. COERCING DISTRIBUTIVE READING THROUGH METONYMY

• Authors: Kyseľová Miroslava , Ivanová Martina
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to analyse distributive verbs in Slovak formed by means of the distributive prefix po-. Distributive semantics of the verb imposes constraints on its arguments, profiling the distribution of an action over every member of a plural object or subject. The study brings evidence on sentence structures in which the argument of the distributive verb is used in the singular form. In such structures, there is a mismatch between the semantic properties of the distributive verb with the role of a selector and the grammatical properties of its argument with the role of a selected element. The grammatical context thus causes the language user to reinterpret the semantic features of the argument. The use of the singular form of an argument in such structures can be understood as the result of an operation that changes the semantics of the argument on the basis of metonymic transfer. Metonymic operations providing the target plural interpretation can be analysed in terms of various metonymic models, corresponding to particular idealized cognitive models. Three values of distributivity are analysed: participant distributivity (also labelled as external), temporal distributivity, and spatial distributivity (also labelled as internal). The analysis shows how different interpretations of distributivity arise depending on the metonymic interpretation of nominal arguments.

Keywords

EN

DISTRIBUTIVITY; METONYMY; COERCION

• Publisher: Ludovit Stur Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská reč (Slovak Language)
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 90
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 126 – 151

Contributors

author

Kyseľová Miroslava

• University of Prešov, Faculty of Arts, 17. novembra 1, 080 78, Prešov, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0459-4171

author

Ivanová Martina

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7654-300X

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/slovrec.2025.2.7