Metonymy Avoidance in Korean

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of metonymic shortcuts in Korean and show that Korean displays a tendency, compared to languages such as English or French, to avoid metonymic extensions in the lexicon. This can be seen in the relative scarcity of typical examples of metonymies, such as material-to-product or place-to-activity meaning extensions, as well as in the absence of more marginal phenomena, such as antonomasia, a particular form of metonymy (proper name-to-object). Some morphological and grammatical features of the Korean language will be suggested that can explain this state of affairs.