Principled Polysemy Revisited: A Minimal Polysemy Approach

The meanings of prepositions have received scant attention in traditional linguistics, and have been treated as arbitrary by and large. Since the rise of Cognitive Linguistics, prepositional polysemy has become a heated topic and invited treatments of a great number of cognitive linguists. They hold that prepositional meanings are not arbitrary, but systematically related to each other, forming motivated semantic networks. Among them, Tyler and Evans (2003) have been holding sway with their "Principled Polysemy Model", in which they make a distinction between meaning (context-dependent) and sense (context-independent), put forward criteria to determine a distinct sense, and develop a more constrained semantic network for over. In China, some scholars like Zhang Yihua (2005) have conducted studies on its implementation in lexicography, etc.The present research, based on Cognitive Grammar, takes a "no-polysemy view" to revisit this model and probes into prepositional polysemy. By revisiting some typical examples among the 14 postulated additional senses of over, it is revealed that this model is not flawless.Close scrutiny of the Covering Sense, the Above-and-beyond Sense, the Over-and-above Sense, the More Sense, the Control Sense, and the Preference Sense shows that they are all related to spatial relationship which over designates in its primary meaning. They are not distinct senses of over, but rather are meanings coming about on the basis of over and other neighboring words, and are ascribed to over alone. From almost all these instances, an "A over B" structure can be identified. In the former three instances, over designates spatial relationship between A and B, while in the latter three over designates interconnection relationship between A and B, and this relationship arises from the concrete spatial relationship via conceptual metaphor, in a way coherent with how we use language.It is shown that the "Principled Polysemy Model" exhibits three flaws:(1) a misleading premise, which declares the meaning that comes about on the basis of the preposition over and other words to be the basic meaning of over; (2) assuming still redundant and erroneous polysemy for over;(3) frequent mismatched examples.This paper tries to provide an innovative minimal polysemy approach to prepositional polysemy by revisiting the "Principled Polysemy Model", and reveals the significance of tracing back to the nature of prepositional meanings in probing into prepositional polysemy.