A Study Of Three Concepts "AT""ON" And "IN"

The study is undertaken to investigate the three fundamental spatial concepts conveyed by AT, ON and IN with the purpose of finding out their specific metaphorical extensions in Jane Austin’s English novels, examining the distribution frequencies of their various metaphorical extensions, and exploring the similarities and differences of the three concepts in terms of their metaphorical extensions and their distribution frequencies. This study is conducted from the theoretical perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which is a branch of Cognitive Linguistics.The data analyzed in the study is taken from a small self-built corpus that is made up of Jane Austin’s (1775-1817) three novels, namely. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma. The forty-thousand word corpus generates2934instances of at,2391instances of on, and7216instances of in respectively, from which746instances of AT,2013instances of ON, and5898instances of IN are selected for achieving the research objectives.The research questions to be answered in the study are as follows:1) What are the specific metaphorical extensions of the three concepts AT, ON and IN in Jane Austin’s English novels?2) How do the various metaphorical extensions of AT, ON and IN distribute in the target domains?3) What are the similarities and differences of the three concepts AT, ON and IN in terms of their metaphorical extensions and their distribution frequencies?Based on the analysis of the collected data, this study yields three main findings as follows:1) AT, ON and IN are used to structure the same target domains, namely, STATE, EVENT, TIME and QUANTITY, with the former two constituting large proportions of all the metaphorical extensions and the latter two constituting smaller proportions. Of the four target domains, STATE is the most complicated that can be divided into three categories:physical state, mental state and state of event, while EVENT, TIME and QUANTITY are relatively simple in construction and low in percentage, especially the target domain of QUANTITY, for the reason that only,AT has its share in this domain. In another word, AT has its metaphorical extensions in all of the four target domains, whereas ON and IN only have their metaphorical extensions in three of the four target domains. However, the three prepositions form a systematic and coherent system. This confirms the argument made by Lakoff&Johnson (1980) that there is an internal systematicity to each spatialization metaphor and an overall external systematicity among the various spatialization metaphors.2) AT, ON and IN are used to carry metaphorical meanings. As many as25%(746) of the2934instances of the concept AT are found to carry metaphorical meanings, and the four target domains for AT can be arranged in the order of STATE, TIME, EVENT and QUANTITY.84%(2013) of the2391instances of the concept ON are found to carry metaphorical meanings and the four target domains for ON can be arranged in the order of STATE, EVENT, TIME and QUANTITY.82%(5898) of the7216instances of the concept IN are found to carry metaphorical meanings and the four target domains for IN can be arranged in order of STATE, EVENT, TIME and QUANTIT.3) There exist some similarities and differences among the three concepts of AT, ON and IN in terms of their metaphorical extensions and their distribution frequencies. In terms of metaphorical extensions, the metaphorical extensions of all three prepositions take very large proportions in their usages. The metaphorical meanings of AT, ON and IN are deeply rooted in their spatial functions for the reason that metaphorical meanings come from the image schemas of the three prepositions, whose basis is the space. Among the three Concepts, AT tends to contribute itself to making concrete meanings and then possesses less potential in forming abstract meanings than ON and IN, which can be explained that the more sophisticated the image schema’s dimension is, the more potential of the image schema owns to form metaphorical extensions. In the process of forming metaphorical extensions, ON has a slightly larger potential in forming dynamic meanings than AT, while IN has the least potential in this respect but tends to form a great number of static meanings. In terms of frequencies, the four target domains involved in the metaphorical mappings of the concept AT can be arranged in the order of STATE. TIME, EVENT and QUANTITY, whereas the four target domains of the concepts ON and IN can be arranged in the order of STATE, EVENT, TIME and QUANTITY. That is, of the four target domains of all the three concepts, the target domain of STATE takes up the first place in terms of frequency while the target domain of QUANTITY is always at the bottom of the list. Whether in total number or selected number of the three prepositions, IN surpasses the other two with great advantage while AT falls behind the other two far away, which demonstrates that IN has the greatest potential to form metaphorical extensions and AT has the least potential. The pedagogical implications lie in the following aspects:1) The analysis of spatial metaphors in the three novels provides an alternative choice for the teaching and learning of literary works and enables people to appreciate literary works better from a different perspective.2) An analysis like this will facilitate the teaching and learning of the target language because it can deepen students’understanding of the cognitive function of spatial metaphors and sharpen their metaphorical awareness in English learning.3) Such an analysis can meanwhile cast some light on the compilation of textbooks and dictionaries, which are meant to include some necessary introductions to Conceptual Metaphors, in order to improve foreign language teaching and learning.