Semantic Extension Of Spatial Preposition AT, ON And IN From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Fauconnier (1997) in his book Mappings in Thought and Language has formally proposed the Conceptual Blending Theory, which is considered as a series of cognitive activities combined from different cognitive domain frameworks. The framework of Conceptual Blending Theory has a complete structure and a set of flexible operation mechanism. There are four mental spaces:two Input Spaces, one Generic Space and one Blending Space.This paper analyzes the semantic extension of spatial preposition AT, ON and IN from the perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory. This paper employs Image Schema theory to analyze the spatial senses of prepositions, which are considered as the prototypical senses of preposition. With150examples, this paper analyzes the extension of each preposition from Spatial Domain to Time Domain, Objective Domain, Cause Domain, Static Domain, Dynamic Domain, and Numeral Range, in order to find out the process of the change in mental space on the extension of each preposition.There are four parts in this paper:Chapter One is literature review, which talks about the definition of spatial preposition and the studies of spatial preposition in traditional research and cognitive research. Chapter Two focuses on the theoretical framework and methodology. It points out four theories:Cognitive Semantics, Image Schema, Prototype Theory, and Conceptual Blending Theory. This paper mainly takes both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze150examples which come from Corpus. Chapter Three is the main part of this paper, the paper adopts the Image Schema to explain the prototypical meanings of prepositions, and then it analyzes the semantic extension of three spatial prepositions respectively from the perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory. For example the spatial preposition AT, which is projected from Spatial Domain to Time Domain, Objective Domain, Cause Domain, Static Domain, Dynamic Domain, and Numeral Range, and the changes of people’s mental space. Chapter Four expounds the major findings, we can sum up the following two points:Point One is three prepositions can be projected from Spatial Domain to other domains, and generate new meanings; Point Two is three prepositions can be projected into the same domain, but the meanings and usage are quite different. Such as, the verb "call" can be matched with three prepositions, but the meanings of collocation differ.This paper analyzes the changing process of mental space on the basis of Conceptual Blending Theory and to add new evidence to the semantic analysis of English prepositions. Tn addition, it proposes some snggestions for teaching of English spatial prepositions...