A Cognitive Analysis Of Polysemy In English Spatial Prepositions

It is very common that a preposition has more than one meaning or extensive meanings. This is especially the case for simple spatial prepositions.Traditionally researchers tend to pay much attention to the distinctiveness in different meanings of a word., For example, in componential analysis of the polysemous word bachelor, four different meanings of this word are distinct with one another by the "distinguishers", that is, semantic features that function to distinguish a meaning from another. Thus in such an analysis, bachelor with its four meanings is treated as four words. Nowadays such an atomic approach has aroused much criticism.Since the 1970s, influenced by the achievements in cognitive psychology, a new cognitive approach to language problems is adopted by some researchers. One of the achievements much appreciated by linguists is the theory of prototype hi categorization and conceptualization. According to this theory, we classify the perceived experience into different categories according to its family resemblance to members of a category and consequently form a concept of it. In such a category, the prototype has the most similarity to others and functions as the start point of such family resemblances. Inspired by such a theory, researchers also regard the multiple meanings of a word as a category, namely a polysemous category. In such a category, a protomeaning functions as the core meaning of the category and helps to categorize other meanings. Another aspect in cognitive process is that concepts exist in a network and thus we can only understand a concept in its relation with others. Sometimes we even employ a concept in structuring another, for example, the employment of the up-down concept in structuring power relations. And in most cases we employ a specific or physical concept in structuring another one, especially an abstract or non-physical concept. Suchkind of employment of a concept in structuring and understanding another is termed as "metaphorical concept"(Lakoff, 1980: 6). Thus, some concepts are more basic and likely to be employed in such kind of structuring. In cognitive linguistics, these concepts are termed as "basic domains" (Langacker, 1978: 147). Of the basic domains, concepts for spatial relations, especially simple spatial relations are overwhelmingly employed to structure other concepts, both basic and non-basic ones. To term these simple spatial relations, Lakoff (1987) coined the name "image schemas". For a spatial preposition, most of its non-spatial meanings are simply resulted from the employment of these simple spatial relations in conceptualization of other perceived experience.Based on these analyses, this work investigates the internal structures of spatial prepositions and points out that the related meanings of a spatial preposition is structured by the protomeanings and thus the image schemas hi the protomeanings and these meanings exist in a hierarchical network.