Les figures éteintes dans le lexique de haute fréquence

Abstract

Jacqueline Picoche & Marie-Luce Honeste, The Treatment of Conventionalized Figures in Lexicon Items of a High Frequency In this paper, the authors study only two main figures, metaphor and metonymy, and a third, secondary and hybrid one, named catachresis. This figures are important for the polysemic development of words. The first one seems to be explained by a movement of « subduction » or abstraction and semantical impoverishment, notion borrowed from the french linguist Gustave Guillaume and important in the works of Jacqueline Picoche. The second one seems to be explained by a contrary movement of thought, that she calls « transduction » : isolation of a semantic component in the semem n° 1 and injection of this component in a semem n° 2, of equal or superior semantic wealth. The examples are chosen in the french high-frequency vocabulary. So, the matter is extremely common and worn out figures, whose figure status must be explained diachronically ; but an adequate stylistic treatment can give them back something of their previous vigour, and even synchronically there are reasons for chosing a figurative ordination of the semens. verishment, notion borrowed from the french linguist Gustave Guillaume and important in the works of Jacqueline Picoche. The second one seems to be explained by a contrary movement of thought, that she calls « transduction » : isolation of a semantic component in the semem n° 1 and injection of this component in a semem n° 2, of equal or superior semantic wealth. The examples are chosen in the french high-frequency vocabulary. So, the matter is extremely common and worn out figures, whose figure status must be explained diachroni- cally ; but an adequate stylistic treatment can give them back something of their previous vigour, and even synchronically there are reasons for chosing a figurative ordination of the semens.