Predicate Transfer
Predicate transfer
Many referential metonyms are direct stand-ins. Ham sandwich over there is getting ready to pay and leave. There is no transfer of the predicate:
[something (ham sandwich) = someone (that person)] is getting ready to pay and leave.
In the oft-cited example of predicate transfer I'm parked out back, there is no object standing in for me, but I (a person) cannot be physically parked like a car is. Rather, the predicate parked out back (or property of being parked out back) is transferred from the car (actually being parked out back) to me ("being parked out back").
After presenting this example, the Wiki article goes on to discusses the wrong but theoretically possible interpretations of this utterance.
In linguistics, predicate transfer1 is the reassignment of a property to an object which would not otherwise inherently have that property. Thus, the expression "I am parked out back" conveys the meaning of "parked" from "car" to the property of "I possess a car". This avoids incorrect polysemous interpretations of "parked": that "people can be parked", or that "I am pretending to be a car", or that "I am something which can be parked". This is supported by the morphology: "We are parked out back" does not mean that there are multiple cars; rather, that there are multiple passengers (having the property of being in possession of a car). Wiki
1G. Nunberg, "Transfers of Meaning", Journal of Semantics, 1995 - Oxford Univ Press
Another example with explanation:
The analyses of these examples are meant to demonstrate that referential metonyms are basically abbreviations. What is left out is something that 'goes beyond saying' in the context in question, but more importantly, that which is retained has, in its particular context, the greatest information value.
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I have so far concentrated on the interpretation of the metonym itself and ignored the interpretation of the utterance containing it. Also in the following I will restrict my attention in this way, but will here at least mention the distinction. Consider I am bugged in the sense of its paraphrase The place I am staying at is bugged. Both describe the same type of situation and have the same truth conditions. Yet their interpretations are not quite equivalent. In I am bugged what is conveyed is not only that the place where the speaker happens to be is bugged, but that this is something that is of particular relevance to the speaker. Nunberg refers to this phenomenon as predicate transfer. Metonomy in Language and Thought (1999)
It is a subtle distinction. I don't know if the phenomenon was the subject of discussion before Nunberg gave it a name.