In metaphor, characteristics of one concept are attributed to the other concept (“the internet is a gold mine”)
In metonymy, no attribution of characteristics is intended; the relationship is made for convenience of reference (“the ham sandwich is waiting for his check”)
What is metonymy good for? (Observations and speculations)
Using a metonym saves time (“The ham sandwich….”)
It can be cumbersome to give the full name of what you are referring to (“Which airlines fly from Boston to Denver?“)
You may not know enough to give the full name of what you are referring to (“My computer beeps when I hit the delete key.”)
You can avoid sounding wordy or pedantic (“The kettle is boiling.”)
The metonym may refer to the most salient attribute of an entity in the speaker and listener’s context (“The ham sandwich….”)
“Stallard reports on a 27% performance improvement when metonymy resolution is incorporated into a question-answering system about airline reservations.”
“We found metonymic expressions in 15% of the utterances in a German language corpus of information technology test reports.”
“In a small-scale experiment [using the BNC] we found, e.g., that approximately 50% of 100 randomly drawn occurrences of ‘BMW’ referred metonymically to cars or motorcycles, while the other half referred literally to the company.”
The interdependence of anaphora and metonymy resolution is obvious in everyday language use, e.g., “The treaty has to be signed by the American government. The United States announced….”.
