A Cognitive Approach To Polysemous English Spatial Prepositions

As function words, Prepositions are deemed as very difficult items both in English learning and teaching because the senses of them are quite complex and abundant and the usage and collocation of them are quite flexible and complex. There were quite a few research schools about polysemy in the history, who proposed different ideas from each other. Polysemy is the association of two or more related senses with a single linguistic form.The thesis aims to analyze the three synonymous prepositions ON,OVER and ABOVE basis on perspective of cognitive linguistics. Five research questions are addressed in this study.1. What are the primary senses of spatial prepositions ON,OVER and ABOVE?2. What are the target domains involved in the metaphorical extensions of ON, OVER and ABOVE?3. How are the metaphorical senses of ON,OVER and ABOVE extended through metaphorical mapping?4. What’s the difference among these three prepositions?5. What’s the pedagogical implications?This study is divided into five parts. Chapter One is the introduction. It introduces the background of the article, the purpose of the study and the layout of the paper; Chapter Two is the Literature Review and introduces the existing researches of preposition and polysemy; Chapter Three is the Cognitive Explanatory Framework of English Polysemous Preposition and introduces the cognitive linguistics, the categorization theory, image schema, metaphor and metonymy, as the theoretical basis of this study; Chapter Four is the cases study of ON, OVER, ABOVE and respectively analyzes the prototypical sense, image schema and metaphor meanings of these three prepositions.This paper, the author will study ON at the first, the prototype for ON is that the TR(trajector) is higher than LM (landmark) along the vertical axis. Then drawing the statics image schema and dynamic image schema to ON, and analyze the original meaning of ON, and their metaphorical extension by means of image schemas and metaphors, thus, the semantic network of ON can be presented. There are seven metaphors of ON,1) Scope;2) Status, manner;3) Scenario;4) Timing;5) Logical relations;6) Social relations;7) Money domain.For OVER and ABOVE, I adopted the same way to explain it. The prototype for OVER is that the TR(trajector) is higher than LM (landmark) along the vertical axis,no contact between TR and LM. ABOVE’s prototype is that the TR is vertically higher than LM, also no contact with each other. So, both ABOVE and OVER can indicate a vertical relation between TR and LM. But there are some differences between OVER and ABOVE, OVER takes a motion sense, and has richer spatial meanings than ABOVE. OVER is used in the following target domains:the domain of reason, quantity, power and time, manner and so on. Spatial ABOVE is mapped onto the domain of power and society, the domain of quantity and idiom.Chapter Five Conclusion, This part gives the summary of research and Pedagogic Implications. The metaphorical extensions of ON, OVER and ABOVE are determined by our bodily and physical experience, and the transference from the spatial concepts to non-spatial concepts is quite conformity with the process of human cognition, that is human knowledge is organized from the concrete to the abstract. The study thus supports the argument of Lakoff&Jonson that our knowledge is organized metaphorically.The study has the following pedagogical implications:Through the analysis of the three prepositions, The three prepositions studied in this research are synonyms, and the meaning of OVER and ABOVE are more similar, hence English learners always misuse them. This study compared their similarities and differences from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, which will help English learners understand their meaning deeply and use them correctly.The study facilitates the teaching and learning of English prepositions. From the views of cognitive linguistics, the various meanings of a preposition are not arbitrary, but relevant to each other. The metaphorical extensions of prepositions are based on their spatial meanings. And each different image schema represented different extended meaning. And analyzing the connection and difference among them, in that we can have a better understanding for these three prepositions. So the teachers should explain the relationship to students, which can help them master prepositions. And to facilitate teacher teaching and students learning. Finally, teachers should provide students some specific words and phrases usage, and the context of the expressions. It is more advantageous to the student to study the special usage of prepositions.