Drawing on examples from corpora of contemporary English, this study argues that the conjunctive expression not to mention, as seen in (1), is developing a discourse marker function. This use is exemplified by its independent use in sentence (2), signaling the addition or elaboration in the following discourse.

This study analyzes the relationship between linguistic expressions and images on prohibition signs observed in urban areas in contemporary Japan. Previous research on public signs has mainly focused on aspects such as linguistic landscapes and their comprehensibility for nonnative speakers of Japanese. Cognitive linguists have examined multimodal texts, including advertisements and public signs, but only a few have paid attention to the interaction between linguistic and visual elements. Thus, it remains unclear how these two types of elements are associated in individual signs to form a coherent message.

Accordingly, the present study focuses on prohibition signs where linguistic expressions (e.g., “Do Not Smoke”) specify a prohibited action, while images (e.g., a smoking cigarette) do not depict an act. Analysis of specific examples reveals that two types of figurative mechanisms, namely, metonymy and synecdoche, are useful tools for describing the connection between visual and verbal elements. On the one hand, metonymy can serve as a connector between an image that depicts a person or an object and a prohibited action based on the proximity between them. For example, a smoking cigarette may signify, through OBJECT FOR PROCESS metonymy, the act of smoking in the area around the sign instead of the cigarette. On the other hand, synecdoche generalizes a prohibited object displayed on the sign. For instance, a crossed-out image of a hamburger and an onigiri can represent a general prohibition on eating food of any kind and not these two through SPECIES FOR GENUS synecdoche. Thus, the image on a prohibition sign can be connected to a prohibited act through metonymy and synecdoche.

The figurative cohesion in prohibition signs implies a cognitive link between verbal and visual elements. According to cognitive linguistics, figurative language, such as metonymy and synecdoche, is a cognitive phenomenon that reflects the mechanisms of the human mind. Therefore, the association of images and words on prohibition signs via metonymy and synecdoche may reflect cognitive collaboration between these two types of symbolic representation. Thus, this study demonstrates a multimodal way of realizing figurative thinking using public signs as examples.

This study empirically demonstrated the development of the special usage of the go V construction, went to go V, as in I went to go visit her. To this end, this study explored the change in frequency of went to go V and the relation between the usage and the syntactic environments where the go V construction occurs. Statistical analyses of data from the Movie Corpus revealed two main findings. First, went to go V was first attested in the 1970s in the corpus and has since dramatically increased especially between the 1990s and the 2010s. Second, between the 1940s and the 1960s, the go V construction was closely related to the hortative usage, while from the 1990s to the 2010s, it was linked to semimodal contexts. Considering these findings, this study concluded that went to go V spread substantially since the late twentieth century, potentially influenced by the gradual increase in nonhortative, semimodal usage.