A Prototype Theory-based Study On Polysemy

Lexical polysemy is the most pervasive and the most important semanticphenomenon in English. Therefore, it has been the focus of linguists’ researches. As atypical polysemic phenomenon, prepositions have been researched since ancient times,and among these researches two camps can be divided—the traditional and thecognitive. The traditional grammarians describe the preposition based on its functionand meaning in the sentence. The deficiency of this point of view lies in laying unduestress on the internal mechanism of the language system, and neglecting therelationship between the language internal system and outside world, and human’scognition process of language. The philosophical basis and the language view of thecognitive linguistics emerged in the1970s. Different from the traditional one, thecognitive linguistics starts from the cognitive point of view, paving a new way for thelanguage study. The cognitive linguistics supposes that all entries of a word composean open semantic category, in which the central meaning of the word is treated as aprototype. Along with the language use and development, the central meaning extendsoutward gradually and finally forms other senses. These closely interrelated sensesconstitute the highly motivated semantic network of the word.This thesis studies the polysemy with the Prototype Theory as the theoreticalfoundation and takes the English preposition “over” as a case study. This thesisreveals the prototypical sense of “over” and the extended distinct senses derived fromit. Then it tries to construct the semantic network of “over” and manifests the relevance of different senses. Moreover, it explains the reasons of the formation ofpolysemy with a case study of “over”.The thesis employs corpus retrieval method and50examples with “over” inBNC are selected as samples. Then it analyzes the meanings of “over” in50examples.In addition, it represents the result with figures and image schemas.This thesis consists of five chapters. In Chapter1, the background andsignificance of the present study are pointed out. In Chapter2, the theoreticalfoundation of the present study is illustrated, including the definition of polysemy andapproaches to the study of it, prototype theory and categorization, the prototypicalsense and polysimic semantic extension. Chapter3is the research design. Chapter4isthe construction of the polysimic semantic network of “over” and argues the relevanceof its different meanings. Chapter5is the conclusion of the thesis.The present study shows that the fertile senses associated with “over” arerelated to one another in a systematic and motivated way. In other words, the varioussenses of “over” construct a highly motivated semantic network with a prototypicalsense in the central position around which locate other extended senses. In addition, itis proved that the prototype theory, compared with other theories, has a strongerexplanatory power in the study of prepositions.