This dissertation analyzes the Bulgarian prefixes nad- and pre-, and the prepositions they originate from, nad 'above, over' and prez 'across, through, over', from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Using examples from a Corpus of Spoken Bulgarian and E-mail Messages in Bulgarian (informal spoken and written discourse), it presents a semantic network for each concept that accounts for its various spatial (or physical) and abstract (temporal or metaphorical) meanings. The main goal is to establish the links among the different senses, and show the inadequacy of the lists of unrelated senses presented by traditional Bulgarian references and treatments to date.
Another goal is to compare and contrast NAD and PRE with their counterparts in American English – above, over, across, through, from-to, and out (based on Brugman 1981, Lakoff 1987, Lindstromberg 1998, Tyler & Evans 2003). This work shows that NAD and PRE share a number of schemas with English over, and pre- matches over in semantic complexity. NAD and PRE are also compared to some Slavic cognates: Russian, Slovenian, Croatian, and Polish NAD, Polish prze- and przez, and Russian pere- (based on Janda 1988, Pasich-Piasecka 1993, Kochańska 1996, Šarić 2001). As expected, NAD and PRE and their Slavic counterparts exhibit considerable overlap in the range of meanings, but there are differences as well.
Like other cognitive analyses, this study identifies a central (most prototypical) meaning of each concept, e.g., the higher schema of NAD and the across schema of PRE, and gives them a privileged status in the generation of all secondary schemas linked either to the central schema or to each other. The semantic networks of NAD and PRE exhibit a family resemblance structure where schemas share different sets of properties rather than the same property set, or are linked by transformations and metaphors. These links reflect cognitive models grounded in our physical experience and mental processing mechanisms such as inferencing, analogy, metonymy, metaphor, etc., which we use to conceptualize the world.
This analysis shows that traditional treatments of Bulgarian verbal prefixes and prepositions need to be revised. It has implications for cross-linguistic cognitive studies and L2 learning and teaching.
|
E-mail this message to a friend
