METONYMY AS A COGNITIVE MECHANISM IN THE FORMATION OF PHRASEOLOGICAL MEANING: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND UZBEK

This paper examines conceptual metonymy as a cognitive process that contributes to meaning creation in the phraseology of English and Uzbek. In traditional linguistics, metonymy is usually described as a semantic mechanism motivated by proximity between entities. By contrast, conceptual metonymy is defined as a process in which a salient aspect of a cognitive domain serves as an access point to another aspect within the same domain. This perspective is particularly appropriate for phraseological units, whose figurative meanings are typically grounded in embodied experience, culture, and conventional conceptual structures. In this study, a qualitative comparative approach is adopted, and several verbal phraseological units in English and Uzbek are analysed in terms of the metonymic relationships that underlie their meanings. The analysis compares the manifestations of metonymy in English and Uzbek verbal phraseological units, highlighting their shared and language-specific cognitive and semantic characteristics.