The Role Of Image Schema In Semantic Extension Of English Spatial Preposition And Pedagogic Implication

The primary sense generation and semantic extensions are the results of human cognitive categorization and conceptualization. Image schemas are simple structures that constantly recur in our everyday bodily experience. When an entity or a scene of a physical relation between entities enters into human mind, an image schema (the prototypical schema) comes into being, so as to generate a concept accompanied with its primary sense which is used to express that relation. The prototypical schema, so to speak, give birth to a spatial preposition (as a concept) and its primary sense; image schemas can undergo transformations naturally form one image schema into another, and form other spatial senses of the preposition in spatial domain; a series of different but related metaphorical senses are extended by the way of the metaphorical mappings from the concrete spatial domain to the abstract domain based on image schemas. To sum up, image schemas provide the root for semantic extensions of spatial prepositions.This thesis, exemplified with the preposition around, analyzes specifically its primary sense generation and semantic extensions of the spatial prepositions from the perspective of image-schema theory. It is proved in this study that the prototypical schema plays a key role in around's semantic extensions. The present study explains systematically the route of around's primary sense formation and the route of sense extensions. The findings are: a physical relation between two entities recurs in the real world, for example entity A (the Moon) moves about entity B (the Earth) along circular-like path continuously, and this relation comes into our mind. Then we get a Circle-path Schema (the prototypical schema for around), and it produces the concept"around"associated with its original sense, which is applied to describe that relation; The Circle-path Schema is transformed into other Path Schemas (one kind of around's schematic variants) when the part of the trajectory entity A goes is profiled, and the Circle-path Schema and other Path schemas can be turned to be the Location Schemas (another kind of around's schematic variants) when we shift our perspective to the endpoint of the trajectory, thus different schematic variants bring about different spatial senses of preposition around, according to image schema transformations senses are extended in spatial domain; for preposition around, the prototypical schema and schematic variants lie in the spatial domain, abstract sense extensions exist through metaphorical mappings from the spatial domain to the abstract domain.Spatial prepositions have been recognized as one of the difficult aspects in English to master. Based on the previous findings, this thesis also explores two pedagogical implications for teaching prepositions: 1) Traditional approach for instructing a typical preposition is tend to ignore the issue of whether distinct senses associated with each other and to have students simply learn and remember the different senses individually. It seems more efficient for learners that the senses of a spatial preposition can be trigger off mental schemas (image schemas) in mind rather than show numerous senses; 2) An individual preposition exists between a verb or a verb phrase and a noun in a context. It has a strong collocation relation between verbs and nouns, thus the contextual senses are generated. Prepositional instruction, therefore, should focus on collocations, and the way they are pieced together.