The Cognitive Perspective on the Polysemy of the English Spatial Preposition Over
Maria Brenda
Sep 2014 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Ebook
311
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About this ebook
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.
About the author
Maria Brenda, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Szczecin University, Poland. Her major fields of professional interest include the cognitive approach to language; space in language expressed by spatial prepositions; polysemy; prototype theory; category structure; concept formation; and the embodied nature of meaning and meaning construction. Her publications include “Completion, Transfer and Temporal senses of the spatial prepositions over and nad – a contrastive English-Polish study”; “The syntax of the preposition over”; and “Measurement in the More Sense and the Over-and-Above (Excess II) Sense of the preposition over and of the Polish preposition nad”.
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