The embodied image schematic approach to the polysemy of spatial prepositions

Polysemous words, words with multiple related senses, represent a great challenge for any theory of word meaning. Seven experiments investigated the role that recurring bodily activities, force experiences, and perceptual interactions, called image schemas, play in motivating various uses of the polysemous spatial preposition on. The results supported the hypothesis that each use of on is motivated by a complex pattern of embodied image schemas. The results also demonstrated that the image schemas motivated senses of on, rather than just the meanings of the contextual phrases in which the preposition on was embedded. The spatial prepositions on and in were shown to be not mutually exclusive but related on the basis of common force dynamic image schemas, including support and constraint. Experiment 1 identified five major image schemas that are importantly involved in people's bodily experience of the relationship on: support, pressure, covering, constraint, and visibility. Experiment 2 examined people's judgements of similarity for various uses of the preposition on. Experiment 3 obtained image-schematic profiles for these uses of on. It was expected that the judgements of conceptual similarity for various uses of on can be predicted on the basis of the image-schematic profiles of these senses. Experiments 4-5 attempted to replicate Experiments 2-3 using different senses of on. Experiments 4, 5 and 6 together tested the hypothesis that the image schemas motivated the senses of on rather than just the meanings of the contextual phrases in which on was embedded. Experiments 6-7 examined how well the five image schemas appropriate for the preposition on can also account for the preposition in. Overall, the data supported the embodied image-schematic approach to polysemy. The image-schematic account of the preposition on explains why on is used in the particular ways, and why different uses of on make sense to speakers in the way they do.