Metonymical noun-noun nominal compounds in Persian

ABSTRACT This study investigates patterns in metonymical noun-noun compounds in Persian and examines similarities and differences between metonymical compounds in Persian and in English. A detailed analysis of 435 metonymical compounds reveals the following patterns of metonymy-based compounds in Persian: i) metonymical modifier, ii) metonymical head, iii) metonymical head and modifier, iv) compound as a metonymical whole, and v) a whole-part/part-whole metonymic relationship between the components of the compound. The quantitative analysis shows that compounds with a whole-part/part-whole metonymical relationship and compounds with metonymical modifier are by far the most frequent patterns, a result that may be explained by the ease of processing of these two compound types resulting from the transparency of their head element. Comparing patterns of metonymical compounds in Persian with those described in English shows that the first four patterns are observable in both English and Persian whereas the two languages differ to some extent in the last pattern. While Persian compounds with compound-internal metonymic relationships instantiate either whole-part or part-whole metonymies, English compounds with internal metonymic relationship instantiate part-part metonymy as well as whole-part and part-whole metonymies.