Study On The Principled Polysemy Of Spatial Prepositions In,on And Over

As a kind of commonly used functional vocabulary,English spatial prepositions are difficult for learners.Although simple in form,it has quite complex meanings.In China,the research on the acquisition of English spatial prepositions mainly focuses on college students.The research on high school students is still insufficient.This study investigates 300 senior high school students' acquisition of English spatial prepositions in,on,and over based on the semantic network of principled polysemy model.It focuses on the following questions: How is high school students' acquisition of the prepositions — in,on,and over? What are the acquisition similarities and differences among the prepositions—in,on and over? What are the possible factors that affect the acquisition of spatial prepositions in English?Based on the cognitive principle of Tyler&Evans,this study analyzes the principled polysemy of the spatial prepositions in,on and over,and conducts a questionnaire survey on the spatial prepositions among senior three students.The study finds that:(1)The high school students' acquisition of the above three prepositions is not good.The semantic acquisition of the proto-scene—in,on,and over is better than the independent sense.The overall acquisition of in and on is similar,while the acquisition of over is significantly worse than that of in and on.(2)The order of learners' acquisition of spatial prepositions basically starts with the central meaning,and extends from the intermediate meaning to the marginal meaning.The semantics of proto-scene is always the central meaning.However,not all spatial prepositions are best acquired by the semantics of archetypal scene,there will be exceptions for high school students.(3)Factors affecting the acquisition of English spatial prepositions many include language transfer,teaching methods and the layout of English grammar textbooks.Through the research,it is found that high school students still have many deficiencies in the acquisition of spatial prepositions.It is very important for the teachers to know thesituation of students' acquisition in spatial prepositions.In the process of teaching,teachers can guide students to establish a semantic network of prepositions that is easy to understand and clarify the semantic relations.It can facilitate students to acquire the semantics of prepositions better and improve the teaching efficacy of English spatial prepositions.