Metonymy and Metaphor in the Construction of Meaning of English Continuative Verbs

This paper intends to provide a description of the four main continuative verbs in English, i.e. keep, continue, proceed and resume, in terms of the cognitive operations and pragmatic implications associated with some of their most common uses. The analysis expands on the author’s previous research on the topic that has investigated the language-external factors determining the sub-categorization frame of ingressive and egressive verbs. The underlying assumption is that structural differences are the reflection of various conceptualizations of occurrences. Two main processes in particular, namely metonymy and metaphor, appear to interact with the prototypical semantic features of aspectual verbs and their complements, licensing or blocking the constructions in which these verbs appear. Metonymic and metaphoric mappings may also co-exist, thus producing conceptual complexes known as metaphtonymies. The ultimate goal of the present study is to map and motivate on semantic-pragmatic and, above all, cognitive grounds the various lexical-grammatical configurations of English continuative verbs. Keywords: metonymy; metaphor; aspectual verbs; continuative verbs.