Prepositions of Place

12 Key excerpts on "Prepositions of Place"

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  Unpacking Metaphor-related Prepositions in Political Discourse

  From Polysemous to Powerful

  • Mokhtar Ounis(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  These dictionary entries consistently highlight two main characteristics of prepositions: first, their position within a sentence, and second, their function. Prepositions are defined based on their location in relation to other entities within the sentence. Three out of the five definitions incorporate the term “before”, while the fourth definition employs the term “preceding” to emphasize that this positional aspect is intrinsic to the meaning of the preposition.

  The etymology of the word “preposition” underscores its inherent emphasis on position. Its origins trace back to the Latin term praeponere, which combines the prefix prae, denoting “before” or “in front of”, with the verb ponere, meaning “to place” or “to put”. As such, a preposition signifies an element intended to be positioned before or placed in front of another entity within a sentence.

  In addition to their positional aspect, prepositions have another distinct feature: their function. Both dictionaries and grammar textbooks define prepositions by the function of creating a relation between two entities within a sentence. For example, Quirk et al. (1985 : 657) assert that “a preposition expresses a relation between two entities, one being that represented by the prepositional complement, the other by another part of the sentence”. Additionally, the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, a classical grammar reference, defines a preposition as “mortar which binds [the main building blocks of] texts together” (Biber et al. 1999 : 55).

  When these two aspects are combined, a preposition signifies an entity intended to be positioned before another entity while simultaneously establishing a relationship between the preceding entity and the succeeding entity.

  While these two dimensions distinguish a preposition from other parts of speech, they alone are insufficient to fully define its precise meaning. The question arises: is the meaning of a preposition independent or contingent on the relations it establishes, or is it a combination of both? Regarding the first view, it posits that a preposition possesses a fundamental semantic value that is accompanied by a constellation of interconnected meanings. Alternatively, the second view posits that prepositions derive their meanings through their semantically related associations and that these meanings can be accurately determined and anticipated via computational means, as explained by Srikumar and Roth (2013

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  Saying, Seeing and Acting

  The Psychological Semantics of Spatial Prepositions

  • Kenny R. Coventry, Simon C. Garrod(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Spatial prepositions are commonly divided further into locative or relational prepositions (H. Clark, 1973) and directional prepositions (Bennett, 1975). Locative or relational prepositions describe the location of one object in relation to another (e.g., Keith is in his office), whereas directional prepositions describe a change of position (e.g., Simon went to the eye-tracker room — a few minutes ago) or direction in which an object is located (e.g., The wind vane pointed to the north). To give a more complex example (from Bennett, 1975, p. 18), We went from Waterloo Bridge along the Embankment to Westminster describes a starting point, a change of location, and the path taken during the change of location. Locative/relational terms are often further broken down into topological terms on the one hand and projective terms on the other (sometimes also called dimensional terms; see Retz-Schmidt, 1988). Topological terms include prepositions such as in, on, and near, which usually refer to (static) topological relations between objects. For our purposes, we can further distinguish between the simple topological terms in and on and proximity terms such as near and far, which give information about the distance between objects. Projective terms, such as in front of, to the left of, and above convey information about the direction in which one object is located with reference to another object. However, they are special in that they depend for their interpretation upon a particular spatial frame of reference. In turn, this means that each term can be used in several different ways. As Levinson (1996a) has noted, the classification of frames of reference in familiar European languages remains confused, and we therefore follow Levinson's (“suitably catholic”) distinction between three basic reference frames (which can be further subdivided; see, for example, Jackendoff, 1996)

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  Collins Cobuild English Grammar

  • (Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Collins Cobuild

    (Publisher)

  6.72     Like prepositional phrases, adverbs can also be placed after nouns.

  They watched him from the terrace above .The man opposite got up.People everywhere are becoming aware of the problem.We took the road south .

  Prepositions

  6.73     This section explains how prepositional phrases are used to show the place where an action occurs, the place where someone or something is, the place they are going to or coming from, or the direction they are moving in.

  A prepositional phrase consists of a preposition and its object , which is nearly always a noun.

  The most basic use of most prepositions is to indicate position and direction.

  He fumbled in his pocket . On your left is the river.Why did he not drive to Valence ?The voice was coming from my apartment .I ran inside and bounded up the stairs .

  6.74     A preposition is a word that allows you to say more about a thing or an action, because you can choose any appropriate noun after it as its object. Most prepositions are single words, although there are some that consist of more than one word, such as out of and in between .

  Here is a list of common one-word prepositions that are used to talk about place or destination:

  about above across along alongside among around at before behind below beneath beside between beyond by down from in inside into near off on opposite outside over past round through throughout to

  toward (Am)

  towards under underneath up within

  Note that toward and towards are both used in American English, with no difference in meaning.

  Here is a list of prepositions that consist of more than one word and that are used to talk about place or destination:

  across from ahead of all over away from close by close to in between in front of near to next to on top of out of

  6.75     Many prepositions can also be adverbs; that is, they can be used without an object. See paragraph 6.54 for a list of these.

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  Language, Cognition, and Emotion in Keats's Poetry

  • Katrina Brannon(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Prepositions play an essential, constructive, and linking role in grammar and semantics. In regard to this, Gibbs remarks that “prepositions seem to be particularly good at pushing their objects around” (1994 : 48). Furthermore, one intrinsic quality of prepositions in language is their ability to express the notions of space and time, which are very often conceptualized and verbalized metaphorically, as there is an inherent “thematic parallelism between space and time that results in a single set of abstract relations between the two domains [of space and time]” (Gibbs 1994 : 168). Thus, it is logical to see prepositions as grammatical elements which are fundamentally metaphorical, given the fact that their primary vocation within language is to allow for the expression of processual relationships. This unique quality of prepositions thus renders them particularly salient in the analysis of conceptual metaphor, particularly within poetic language, as the combination and multiplication of metaphorical expression is central. As R. Gibbs observes, “metaphorical mappings do not occur in isolation from one another” (Gibbs 1994 : 152). This leads to reflection upon the intrinsic metaphoricity of grammatical classes and the ways in which they are capable of rendering conceptually metaphorical concepts more salient metaphorically, by way of the superposing of “higher and lower metaphorical mappings” (Gibbs 1994 : 152). Therefore, prepositions are key to the full expression of conceptual metaphor: particularly in poetic metaphor, within which the combination of metaphorical mappings is most welcome. Spatial prepositions, moreover, play a special role in metaphoric expression. 1 In Chapter 4, I delved into the inherent link between conceptual metaphor and force-dynamic expressions. This exploration will continue in the present chapter, as prepositions hold an important role in causality

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  Representation and Processing of Spatial Expressions

  • Patrick Olivier, Klaus-Peter Gapp(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Also in the case of prepositions, in fact, the knowledge about the arguments has a fundamental impact on the interpretation of a relation (expressed via a preposition and not via a verb). The main difference is that we do not assume any fixed structure in the representation of objects (such as Qualia Structure proposed by Pustejovsky): Spatial properties are represented together with all other properties of a given object. In this chapter we deal exclusively with static spatial locative expressions, that is, expressions such as the ones appearing in (1), where the location of an object is described via a reference to the known location of another object. In the literature, the first object is called the relatum (Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976), the figure (Talmy, 1985), or the trajector (Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1991) and the second object is respectively called the referent, the ground, or the landmark. We follow Herskovits (1986) and use the terms located object and reference object. The following section includes a short review of the current theories on the meaning of prepositions. The next three sections describe our approach: lexical and terminological knowledge, semantic representation, and interpretation. An example and some conclusions close the chapter. 2. THEORIES OF THE MEANING OF PREPOSITIONS AND ON SPATIAL RELATIONS Theories of the meaning of locative prepositions can be classified as simple relations models versus multiple relations models (cf. Herskovits, 1986). The first class includes theories coming both from linguistics (Bennett, 1975) and from the computational paradigm (Boggess, 1979; Cooper, 1968; Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976; Waltz, 1980). Presumably, the position of Jackendoff (1983, 1990) also falls in this class. The basic idea of these approaches is that all spatial uses of a given preposition can be derived from a single geometric relation, whose arguments are the reference (background) object and the located object

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  Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition

  • Rosa Alonso Alonso(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  The fact that languages divide up and lexicalise spatial configurations and functions in different ways has also been addressed by Tyler and Evans (2003) in their Principled Polysemy Model, which provides a cognitive linguistics account of the various meanings associated with English prepositions in terms of systematically related polysemy networks. We recognise the value of this powerful model but do not rely on it in the present study because of the nature of our analysis, which focuses on learners’ choice of spatial prepositions in contexts that reflect fairly prototypical meanings of IN, ON and AT. Our study is nevertheless motivated by a cognitive linguistics perspective that assumes crosslinguistic differences in the ways that speakers of different languages construe spatial configurations. We now turn to the findings of previous research regarding crosslinguistic differences and crosslinguistic influence in the expression of spatial relationships.

  Crosslinguistic Differences and Crosslinguistic Influence in the Expression of Spatial Relationships

  One of the misconceptions about spatial prepositions is that their use is determined solely by the spatial and geometrical configurations of the objects whose relationships they refer to (e.g. apple in a bowl , pen on a table ). Although some prepositions in some languages (e.g. above in English) might refer relatively straightforwardly to geometrical configurations (but see Tyler & Evans, 2003), others are chosen more on the basis of extra-geometric information, such as location control. Location control refers to the likelihood that if the reference object moves, the located object will move with it (Coventry & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2008). The English preposition IN is chosen on the basis of both geometric (containment) and extra-geometric (location control) criteria. For example, an apple that is sitting inside a bowl is deemed by English speakers to be in the bowl because the apple is at least partially contained by the bowl and because the apple will move with the bowl if the bowl moves. An apple that is on a table underneath an upside-down bowl, on the other hand, is not in the bowl because, even though the apple is contained by the bowl, the apple will not move when the bowl moves. Studies reviewed by Coventry and Guijarro-Fuentes (2008) show that pre-linguistic infants are sensitive to both geometric and extra-geometric information in preferential looking tasks, and that it is not until infants begin acquiring their native language that their preferences become more language-specific (see also Bowerman & Choi, 2001; McDonough et al

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  Deixis in Narrative

  A Cognitive Science Perspective

  • Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, Lynne E. Hewitt, Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, Lynne E. Hewitt(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Because these spatial relations constitute propositions that assert an abstract place as a satellite place within the semantic vicinity of the ground object, we call them spatial proximity functions. These are typically expressed by directional relations (such as in front of behind, to the left of), inclusion relations (such as in, out of, on, between, beside), or distance relations (such as near to, away from). Spatial case relations and various spatial proximity functions are both coded in English by spatial prepositions (as well as by some preposition clusters). Clark (1973) analyzed the propositions into and onto as compositions of in with to and on with to, respectively. Our analysis is an extension of Clark’s analysis. English spatial prepositions (and preposition clusters) are a surface amalgamation of a spatial deep case marker with a spatial proximity function. For example, the prepositional phrase, “in the room,” in the sentence, John stayed in the room, is analyzed as a surface realization of something equivalent to “AT some place P where P is-IN the room.” In other words, this analysis decomposes the surface prepositional phrase in the room into a case component containing a deep spatial case marker AT and an abstract place argument, and a spatial proximity function component that asserts the spatial proximity relation is-IN held by the abstract place to the ground object, the room. In Sentences 4a and 4b, 4 The mouse lives under the tree where Tom found the eagle’s nest. The mouse lives under the tree where Tom found many strange rocks. the places qualified by the two where-clauses are two different places despite their analogous surface syntactic configuration. The analysis that we argue for accounts for this structural ambiguity

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  English Grammar

  A University Course

  • Angela Downing(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  on ) – in the most basic use. Further uses can then be explained as modifications of the basic image schema, as these mental pictures are perceived and derived from our experience of the world.
• Many basic patterns of spatial location are carried over to time relations, such as in the house, in November, in 1492 , and to ordinary metaphorical uses which form part of our daily interaction (in love, in time, in pain ).