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Article published In: Beyond Corpus Data — Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by Anton Granvik, Veera Hatakka, Olli O. Silvennoinen, Riku Erkkilä and Eveliina Mäntylä
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 23:2] 2025
► pp. 440–480

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Regular article

Contrasting the semantics of prepositions through a cognitive linguistic approach

The case of English on, Italian su, and Russian na

 | Macquarie University
 | Macquarie University
Published online: 2 February 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00170.kal
Abstract
Many studies on cognitive-semantic analysis focus on the patterns of polysemy of prepositions and the explanation of how the multiple senses of prepositions are related in systematic ways. Only a few publications pay attention to the contrastive analysis of prepositions in different languages. The article addresses this gap in research literature and aims: to present a contrastive analysis of the English preposition on and its Italian and Russian partial equivalents in order to uncover the main areas of semantic asymmetry between them; to compare patterns of semantic extensions (from spatial to nonspatial senses) of these prepositions, and to determine how the similarities and differences in their spatial senses explain the similarities and differences in their nonspatial senses. The article follows a conceptual metaphor approach. Since most of the conceptual metaphors and metonyms are common cross-linguistically, similarities in patterns of semantic extensions of prepositions can be explained through the conceptual metaphors and metonymies on which these extensions are based. The article also demonstrates how the similarities and differences in spatial senses of the English preposition on, Italian su, and Russian na explain the similarities and differences in their nonspatial senses.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The polysemy of English on, Italian su, and Russian na
    • 2.1Spatial senses
    • 2.2Non-spatial sense extensions
      • 2.2.1Non-spatial expressions based on the source domain of a Surface
      • 2.2.2Non-spatial expressions based on the source domains of a Burden, Support, and Pressure
      • 2.2.3Non-spatial expressions based on the source domain of a Goal (onto)
      • 2.2.4Non-spatial expressions based on the source domain of a path
      • 2.2.5Non-spatial expressions based on the source domains of above/up
      • 2.2.6Non-spatial expressions based on the source domain of proximity
  • 3.Semantic asymmetry between the English on, Italian su, and Russian na
    • 3.1Differences in the frequency of a conceptual metaphor
    • 3.2Variations in prepositions caused by a linguo-cultural “pre-selection”
    • 3.3Variations in prepositions caused by differences in connotations of collocated words
    • 3.4Variations of prepositions influenced by the syntactic patterns of synonyms
    • 3.5Variation in sets of prepositions
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (57)
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