The Metonymical Aspects of Rhetorical Adjectives in Saadi Shirazi’s Sonnets

Grammar is one of the fundamental subjects of study in the vast field of Persian language and literature and the study of its elements provides a good basis for research. “Adjective” is one of the parts of speech in Persian grammar and its function is to modify the noun to which it refers. Metonymy is a means of expression that is understood through argumentation and meaning comprehension. One of Saadi’s linguistic techniques is the use of beautiful adjectives and metonymies to make his poetry more attractive. This research employs a statistical approach to investigate the frequency of adjectives containing metonymy in terms of verbal structure in Saadi’s sonnets. Metonymical adjectives, as one of the elements of conversational language, play a prominent role in Saadi’s sonnets. However, Saadi’s contribution to the use of metonymical adjectives is considerably less than that of his contemporaries.