The Cognitive Perspective On The Polysemy Of The English Spatial Preposition Over

This volume investigates the English spatial preposition over and prepositions in general, frequently regarded as function words with little semantic content, and shows that they encode rich and diverse information, both grammatical and semantic. An important research endeavor which the present study undertakes is an examination of whether the meaning of the preposition over is in fact complex enough for the preposition to be treated as a lexical unit rather than merely a functional one. In order to achieve that goal, the gathered linguistic material is analyzed first and foremost in terms of its semantic content; that is, the geometric relations between the trajector and landmark, and the functional consequences of such relations. The research into the morphology of prepositions reveals a considerable area of overlap between prepositions and adverbs, adverbial particles, and prefixes, as well as nouns, verbs and adjectives. The discussion of the syntax of prepositions is illustrated with labeled tree diagrams of selected sentences to show how the preposition over and the prepositional phrases it heads are embedded in larger structures of the English sentence. An important finding of the present study is the confirmation that the spatial preposition over encodes a broad range of geometrical and functional relations, as well as rich grammatical information. This book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in semantic and conceptual aspects of prepositions, meaning construction, human cognition, and management of space.

A Cognitive Perspective on Spatial Prepositions: Intertwining networks is devoted to the issue of the relation between language and thought approached from the perspective of spatial relations encoded by four equivalent spatial prepositions – English to, German zu, Polish do and Russian к. Regarding these prepositions as path-prepositions, the authors show that the prepositional semantic structures are conceptually grounded in the PATH and the MOTION-EVENT frames and explain that prepositional senses emerge as a result of the PATH image schema transformations and metaphorical mappings related to the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor. Based on their findings, the authors show how senso-motoric functioning, life experience, individual knowledge, imagery and different ways in which people conceptualize the world influence the relation between language and conceptualization.

Using a cognitive linguistics perspective, this book provides a comprehensive, theoretical analysis of the semantics of English prepositions. All English prepositions originally coded spatial relations between two physical entities; while retaining their original meaning, prepositions have also developed a rich set of non-spatial meanings. In this study, Tyler and Evans argue that all these meanings are systematically grounded in the nature of human spatio-physical experience. The original 'spatial scenes' provide the foundation for the extension of meaning from the spatial to the more abstract. This analysis articulates an alternative methodology that distinguishes between a conventional meaning and an interpretation produced for understanding the preposition in context, as well as establishing which of several competing senses should be taken as the primary sense. Together, the methodology and framework are sufficiently articulated to generate testable predictions and allow the analysis to be applied to additional prepositions.

Traditional semantic description of Ancient Greek prepositions has struggled to synthesize the varied and seemingly arbitrary uses into something other than a disparate, sometimes overlapping list of senses. The Cognitive Linguistic approach of prototype theory holds that the meanings of a preposition are better explained as a semantic network of related senses that radially extend from a primary, spatial sense. These radial extensions arise from contextual factors that affect the metaphorical representation of the spatial scene that is profiled. Building upon the Cognitive Linguistic descriptions of Bortone (2009) and Luraghi (2009), linguists, biblical scholars, and Greek lexicographers apply these developments to offer more in-depth descriptions of select postclassical Greek prepositions and consider the exegetical and lexicographical implications of these findings. This volume will be of interest to those studying or researching the Greek of the New Testament seeking more linguistically-informed description of prepositional semantics, particularly with a focus on the exegetical implications of choice among seemingly similar prepositions in Greek and the challenges of potentially mismatched translation into English.

Research into cross-linguistic aspects and typology of word-formation has not been paid relevant and systematic attention by morphologists, and only a few articles dealing with various word-formation issues of this kind appear in journals. The chapters in this volume address this issue by discussing, on contrastive principles, important questions of word-formation in a sample of 26 languages. The focus of the book, as a whole, is on typological features of word-formation in the languages sampled. It is aimed at researchers that have an interest in word-formation in a variety of languages.

Our use of spatial prepositions carries an implicit understanding of the functional relationships both between objects themselves and human interaction with those objects. This is the thesis rigorously explicated in Saying, Seeing and Acting. It aims to account not only for our theoretical comprehension of spatial relations but our ability to intercede with efficacy in the world of spatially related objects. Only the phenomenon of functionality can adequately account for what even the simplest of everyday experiences show to be the technically problematic, but still meaningful status of expressions of spatial location in contentious cases. The terms of the debate are established and contextualised in Part One. In the Second Section, systematic experimental evidence is drawn upon to demonstrate specific covariances between spatial world and spatial language. The authors go on to give an original account of the functional and geometric constraints on which comprehension and human action among spatially related objects is based. Part Three looks at the interaction of these constraints to create a truly dynamic functional geometric framework for the meaningful use of spatial prepositions. Fascinating to anyone whose work touches on psycholinguistics, this book represents a thorough and incisive contribution to debates in the cognitive psychology of language.

In Cognitive Linguistics, polysemy is regarded as a categorizing phenomenon; i.e., related meanings of words form categories centering around a prototype and bearing family resemblance relations to one another. Under this polysemy = categorization view, the scope of investigation has been gradually broadened from categories in the lexical and lexico-grammatical domain to morphological, syntactic, and phonological categories. The papers in this volume illustrate the importance of polysemy in describing these various categories. A first set of papers analyzes the polysemy of such lexical categories as prepositions and scalar particles, and looks at the import of polysemy in frame-based dictionary definitions. A second set shows that noun classes, case, and locative prefixes constitute meaningful and polysemous categories. Three papers, then, pay attention to polysemy from a psychological perspective, looking for psychological evidence of polysemy in lexical categories.