English Prepositions Through Semantic Structure

This thesis examines the semantic structure of the English preposition through, and suggests an analysis within cognitive semantics where it is argued that the various senses of this word are best accounted for in terms of a family resemblance category, with the locative schema "TR traverses LM" as its basic sense. Other senses are treated as extensions, for the most part metaphorical, of this basic sense. The polysemous preposition through is chosen as the object of study here, with a view to provide an elaborate account of its semantic structure in a more principled, systematic manner within the cognitive linguistic framework. The study builds on a corpus of English texts from various genres.The thesis comprises four chapters in all. In Chapter 1, I first make a review on the contributions and achievements made by cognitive linguists in the field of prepositional polysemy. Then I briefly introduce the object and purpose of present study, as well as the characteristics of my working methodology. The basic structure of this thesis is also outlined. Chapter 2 comments on existing descriptions of through. The defects of two previous studies on the semantics of through are pointed out. How to avoid the problems of subjective assuming, short of principled methodology and lack of integrity in these previous approaches has become the major concern of present study. At the end of this chapter, a different view on the ordering of senses for an entry in a dictionary is proposed. Lexicographers are suggested to take the synchronic connections between different senses of a word into consideration.Chapter 3 is the focusing part of this thesis. It begins from the expatiation of the theoretical background of this study and presents the basic notions and principles of metaphor theory and prototype theory. In the course of discussion, "TR traverses LM" is confirmed to be the prototypical sense of through, after being attested by a set of new defining criteria. This basic locative schema is exploited to express a wide range of meanings, as it extends into other abstract domains through metaphor. The same meaning extension process happens from less-prototypical locative schemas of through to other domains as well. The entire semantic structure ofthrough, therefore, appears to be a network of interrelated, yet distinct, senses constructed around the central core "TR traverses LM". Another name for such a semantic structure is "family resemblance category". Afterwards, an alternative approach to this analysis is discussed and the defects of this approach are pointed out.In closing, Chapter 4 concludes that the analyses proposed in this thesis are on the right track. It has been shown- convincingly, that the metaphorical senses of through are highly motivated by its prototypical spatial meaning. The totality of through's distribution manifest itself not as a haphazard myriad of unmotivated uses, but as a remarkably coherent natural category.