ACD: The Role of Metonymies in the Genesis of Nominal Metaphors

From the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics,ground of metaphors in traditional rhetoric is abstracted as an ad hoc cognitive domain(ACD) —the overcharging domain that includes both the tenor and the vehicle as its domain members. Consequently,the original cross-domain metaphoric mappings are projected,via shared properties,from source domain to target domain within the same ACD. That is to say,metonymy or metonymic mechanism plays a basic role in the genesis of metaphor. Besides,considering the cognitive basis of metonymy and metaphor respectively,the above assertion abides by human's cognitive law—similarity is based on contiguity,and in turn contiguity guarantees similarity.