The Adessive Case in Polish: A Cognitive Perspective On Some Locative Prepositions (original) (raw)
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The focus of this book is how Slavic languages represent spatial relations, and how spatial cognition and perception influence the understanding and linguistic coding of nonspatial domains. Individual analyses concentrate on the semantics of selected prepositions and cases in Bosnian/ Croatian/ Serbian (B/ C/ S), providing a comparative perspective on other Slavic languages, primarily Russian and Polish. The opening analysis discusses the main theoretical notion - metaphorical extension - exemplifying the relation of spatial usages of linguistic items to non-spatial usages. This is followed by an analysis of the most basic spatial relations, "in-ness" and "on-ness." The meaning network of prepositions equivalent to on and in helps explain the meaning of the cases they combine with: the accusative and locative. Another crucial spatial relation, proximity, is taken into account in the semantic analysis of the B/ C/ S prepositions kod and pri, their Slavic equivalents, and cases they combine with: the genitive and locative. The next chapter deals with the spatial meaning of the dative case, examining dative's prepositional usages, the bare directional dative in B/ C/ S, and the semantic relation of the bare directional dative to other meaning domains of this case.
2008
The focus of this book is how Slavic languages represent spatial relations, and how spatial cognition and perception influence the understanding and linguistic coding of nonspatial domains. Individual analyses concentrate on the semantics of selected prepositions and cases in Bosnian/ Croatian/ Serbian (B/ C/ S), providing a comparative perspective on other Slavic languages, primarily Russian and Polish. The opening analysis discusses the main theoretical notion - metaphorical extension - exemplifying the relation of spatial usages of linguistic items to non-spatial usages. This is followed by an analysis of the most basic spatial relations, "in-ness" and "on-ness." The meaning network of prepositions equivalent to on and in helps explain the meaning of the cases they combine with: the accusative and locative. Another crucial spatial relation, proximity, is taken into account in the semantic analysis of the B/ C/ S prepositions kod and pri, their Slavic equivalents, and cases they combine with: the genitive and locative. The next chapter deals with the spatial meaning of the dative case, examining dative's prepositional usages, the bare directional dative in B/ C/ S, and the semantic relation of the bare directional dative to other meaning domains of this case.
Semantic granularity in the expression of placement and removal events in Polish
This chapter explores the expression of placement (or Goal-oriented) and removal (or Source-oriented) events by speakers of Polish (a West Slavic language). Its aim is to investigate the hypothesis known as 'Source/Goal asymmetry' according to which languages tend to favor the expression of Goals (e.g., into, onto) and to encode them more systematically and in a more finegrained way than Sources (e.g., from, out of). The study provides both evidence and counter-evidence for Source/Goal asymmetry. On the one hand, it shows that Polish speakers use a greater variety of verbs to convey Manner and/or mode of manipulation in the expression of placement, encoding such events in a more fine-grained manner than removal events. The expression of placement is also characterized by a greater variety of verb prefixes conveying Path and prepositional phrases (including prepositions and case markers) conveying Ground. On the other hand, the study reveals that Polish speakers attend to Sources as often as to Goals, revealing no evidence for an attentional bias toward the endpoints of events.
The paper overviews the main trends of research into the semantics of spatial prepositions, as demonstrated by a plethora of papers on linguistic data from a variety of languages. The more traditional approach focuses on locative meaning with respect to other words—both syntagmatically and in paradigms—and considers multiple senses of the same preposition to be arbitrary. In contrast, the modern framework employs the principles of cognitive linguistics for semantic analysis, highlighting the conceptual structuring of entities or relations in extralinguistic reality. On the basis of geometric, functional, and other relations between the figure and the ground, it attempts to explicate not only prepositional synonymy, but also extensive polysemy as a form of categorisation. Consequently, the distinct meanings of a preposition are considered to be related, deriving either from the prototypical sense or any other sense which is related to it, and arranged in a network. The modern line of investigation may provide more possibilities for researchers interested in one language and/or in cross-linguistic studies, thus contributing to the development of lexicography, translation, and other fields of applied linguistics.
Linguistics, 2007
This special issue is devoted to a relatively neglected topic in linguistics, namely the verbal component of locative statements. English tends, of course, to use a simple copula in utterances like ''The cup is on the table'', but many languages, perhaps as many as half of the world's languages, have a set of alternate verbs, or alternate verbal a‰xes, which contrast in this slot. 1 Often these are classificatory verbs of 'sitting', 'standing' and 'lying'. For this reason, perhaps, Aristotle listed position among his basic (''noncomposite'') categories: Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or a¤ection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'. 'Double', 'half ', 'greater', fall under the category of relation; 'in the market place', 'in the Lyceum', under that of place; 'yesterday', 'last year', under that of time.
The typology and semantics of locative predication: Posturals, positionals and other beasts
2007
This special issue is devoted to a relatively neglected topic in linguistics, namely the verbal component of locative statements. English tends, of course, to use a simple copula in utterances like ''The cup is on the table'', but many languages, perhaps as many as half of the world's languages, have a set of alternate verbs, or alternate verbal a‰xes, which contrast in this slot. 1 Often these are classificatory verbs of 'sitting', 'standing' and 'lying'. For this reason, perhaps, Aristotle listed position among his basic (''noncomposite'') categories: Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or a¤ection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'. 'Double', 'half ', 'greater', fall under the category of relation; 'in the market place', 'in the Lyceum', under that of place; 'yesterday', 'last year', under that of time.
Semantics and Pragmatics of Locative Expressions
Cognitive Science 9, 341-378, 1985
The paper examines locative expressions and shows that an adequate account of their meaning must be based on two essential understandings: First, the simple spatial relation, often given as the meaning of the spatial prepositions, is only an “ideal” from which there are deviations in context: second, a level of “geometric conceptualization” mediates between “the world as it is” and language. Pragmatic “near principles” are formulated to explain some deviations from the ideal and several other apparent irregularities of prepositional use. A set of “use types” of the ideal meaning is proposed to account for conventional aspects of locative meaning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this description of locative expressions for artificial intelligence and linguistics.