Metaphor and Metonymy in Language and Thought

How do metaphor and metonymy shape human thought and language? To what extent are these cognitive mechanisms universal, and to what extent culture-specific? How can they be systematically described, formalized, and applied across different scientific and practical domains? What is the role of figurative language in grammar, discourse, etymology, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, language pathologies, forensics, and natural language processing? Are metaphor and metonymy primarily universal neural and embodied mechanisms of thought, or are they largely shaped by specific linguistic, cultural, and social contexts? On which embodied experiences are the metaphorical and metonymic systems of the Croatian language grounded? Which metaphorical systems are shared with other languages, and which are distinctive to Croatian figurative language and thought? How can complex metaphorical systems be decomposed into simpler metaphors, primary metaphors, semantic frames, image schemas, and cognitive primitives?