The impact of autonymy on the lexicon

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the relations between the English lexicon and autonymy, namely the discourse phenomenon that consists in quoting a linguistic object, as in The word “why” was spelt incorrectly. Quite a few English lexemes turn out to have definitions that include an autonym next to ordinary “inert” lexical items. Yet, this fact has been largely overlooked by lexicographers, who have tended to consider that the input to word formation was provided by lexemes, stems and affixes, that is, by elements in the system rather than discourse occurrences.I will distinguish four guises in which autonyms serve as input to word-formation processes. Generally, the lexical incorporation of autonyms results in their losing most of their reflexivity: they stop denoting something very much like themselves (as in We're not interested in the why of things). Yet, the fourth category examined indicates the possibility that the lexicon contains entries for some autonyms. This hypothesis rests on the finding that many items derived from phrases whose utterance carries illocutionary force (e.g. a bravo) have instantiations now as an ordinary lexeme, now as an autonym. In those cases, there is no clear boundary between purely reflexive and minimally reflexive occurrences (between autonyms and lexemes derived from one). This finding sheds new light on the relationships between discourse phenomena and the language system.

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