摘要：Research efforts in cognitive linguistics are frequently focused on the notion of metaphor, while the notion of metonymy, as well as its taxonomical aspects, is not always thoroughly researched. A study of the most recent research papers in the English language has shown that metonymy is often interpreted in a broad fashion, incorporating several different types of cognitive processes and phenomena, so that a scholar becomes unable to distinguish them from each other and / or is essentially forced to regard them as manifestations of the same phenomenon. A more taxonomically accurate approach is suggested, involving the use of the term “synecdoche” for affinity-related concept shifts and including a review of two subclasses of metonymy that have not yet received a considerable amount of attention – propositional metonymy and situational metonymy.
