A Cognitive Study On The Semantics Of Spatial-Temporal Prepositions And The Application To The Compilation Of ECLDs

Although English prepositions are small in number,they are extremely challenging for English as a foreign language(EFL)learners.As a group of frequently used spatial-temporal prepositions,in,on and at seem to denote semantically indeterminate spatial relations with a wide range of usage,consequently posing challenges to numerous EFL learners.This paper intends to investigate a group of English spatial prepositional entries: in,on and at in the hope of finding out compiling problems of prepositional entries for Chinese EFL learners,and suggests possible methods.In order to achieve this objective,firstly,these three prepositions are investigated based on Principled Polysemy Model as well as Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Model(LCCM).Meanwhile,to verify their semantic networks,concordance lines from British National Corpus(BNC)and Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)are retrieved and analyzed.Specifically,in designates a spatial relation in which a trajector(TR)is located within a landmark(LM)which has the structural elements-interior,boundary and exterior;in the proto-scene for on,a TR is in contact with a surface of LM;at indicates co-location between a TR and a LM,in which the location is conceptualized as a point.Moreover,the prototypical spatial lexical concept of in,on and at is containment,contact and practical connection,thus leading to distinct non-spatial senses.Chinese EFL learners’ errors and obstacles are discovered from Chinese Learners’ English Corpus(CLEC).There are three types of errors.The spatial errors arise from the mismatch of dimensions,different focuses of conceptualization,divergent language structure of L1 and L2 language.Errors of temporal uses and metaphorical uses,can be due to learners’ lack of systematic understanding of cognitive mechanisms inherent in these prepositions.Meanwhile,four well-known monolingual and bilingual learner’s dictionaries present some deficiencies in the representation of in,on and at,including excessive and semantically incoherent sense divisions,mismatch between examples and definitions,lack of attention to metaphor and inner relationship,shortage of pictorialinformation and necessary sense discrimination.In accordance,suggestions for these entries are given with the support of Meaning-driven Multidimensional Definition Theory,mainly from the perspective of sense division,definition,exemplification,usage note,discrimination box and cross-reference.