Summary Details
| Query: |
Prepositions/functional uses
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| Author: | Andrew McIntyre | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
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| Summary: |
Dear linguists, this summarises answers to my questions (10.301.2) on 'functional' uses of prepositions. Some uses of some prepositions are specialised to configurations where the located object (LO) and reference object (RO) interact in a manner typical for the entities in question. Often this involves the use of the RO in its standard function. E.g., 'Bob is on the train' cannot be used in a situation where Bob is inside an old train on display in a museum, since uses like 'on the bus/train/boat' presuppose that the RO be able to function as a means of transport. (In my (Australian) variety, I cannot say 'the workers got on the bus to fix the windows', but, as some replies pointed out, my English acceptability judgements in the earlier posting were too harsh and unrepresentative, for which I apologise profusely. Nevertheless, I want to explain such interpretations when they do occur. I am not saying that such constraints occur in every use of the prepositions with which they are attested.) A second example is that 'over' in (1) forces the coindexation of 'his' with 'prisoner' while (2) is either neutral in this respect or (in my variety) implies a situation where the soldier is holding the sword above his own head. Here 'over', unlike 'above', implies that the sword interacts with its RO in some way (i.e. the prisoner's head is a potential target for the sword, while the soldier's head isn't). (1)The soldier intimidated the prisoner by waving a sword over his head. (2) The soldier intimidated the prisoner by waving a sword above his head. Some respondants suggested that functional interpretations are 'just' pragmatic or contextual. Yes, they could well be conversational implicatures. They should not be stipulated in the meaning of the preposition (excepting some idiosyncratic cases and diachronic relics, arguably including 'on the bus', and German 'auf der Post' ('at', lit. 'on' the postoffice). But we must work out how the semantics of the spatial uses of some prepositions licenses functional uses when apparently similar preps don't get functional readings. One finds functional uses e.g. with 'over, at, in' but not 'above, near, inside': If the (admittedly cancellable) interpretation that being 'at a desk' implies being in a position to use it in its function as a support surface, why does being 'near a desk' not do so? This is why I am searching for independently motivated aspects of the spatial meanings of preps. which predict the (non)occurence of functional readings. This aim has not been aspired to systematically in the literature I have seen. It is not easy to fulfill this aim in a non-circular manner. I would add that the specialisations in functional preps. are clearly related to other specialisations such as those in some classes of Germanic particle verbs (cf. 'put a record on' implies putting it on the surface where it can perform its function). Trying to assess this is what got me into this functional preposition business in the first place. I cannot go into satisfactory detail here. Please email me if you are interested in more data. Now for the specific questions. (A) Literature on 'functional uses'. The closest thing to an article-length treatment I have seen is Hottenroth (1981), which deals with Italian 'a'. Vandeloise's (1986) functional view of relationships which other writers see as purely spatial is also very relevant. Otherwise, the studies below mention the subject in a cursory manner. There are doubtless many other studies which do so. As I haven't seen all the following refs., I cannot vouch for their relevance. But most of them are probably worth reading because of their info. on spatial semantics in general. Incidentally, I particularly recommend Becker 1994 for its empirically and theoretically valuable analyses on spatial expressions in Turkish, French, German, English. -BECKER, A., Caroll. M. & Kelly, A., (eds.) 1988. Reference to Space. Strasbourg/ Heidelberg -BECKER A., 1994. Lokalisierungsausdr\252cke im Sprachvergleich. T\252bingen: Niemeyer. -BOWERMAN M.: The origins of children\180s spacial sematic categories. In: Gumperz / Levinson: Rethinking linguistic relativity. CUP 1996. -CIENKI A., 1989. Spatial Cognition and the Semantics of Prepositions in English, Polish and Russian. Munich: Otto Sagner. -Coventry, K. R. & Mather, G. (in press). The real story of 'over'. In P. Olivier (Ed.), Spatial Language: Cognitive and Computational Aspects. Kluwer. -Coventry, K. R. (1998). Spatial prepositions, functional relations and lexical specification. In P. Olivier and K. Gapp (Eds.), The Representation and Processing of Spatial Expressions, pp247-262. Lawrence Erlbaum. -Coventry, K. R. & Prat-Sala, M. (1998). Geometry, function and the comprehension of over, under, above and below. Proceedings of Cognitive Science Society. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. -Coventry, K. R., Carmichael, R. and Garrod, S. C. (1994). Spatial prepositions, object-specific function and task requirements. Journal of Semantics, 11, 289-309. -Cuyckens, H. 1984. At - a typically English preposition. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 19, 49-64. -Cuyckens, H. 1994. Family resemblance in the Dutch spatial preposition op. In: M. Schwarz (ed.) Kognitive Semantik. T\252bingen: Narr. 179-96. -Grabowski, J., 1999. Raumrelationen. Opladen: Wesdeutscher Verlag. -Herweg, M., 1989. Ans\228tze zu einer semantischen Beschreibung topologischer Pr\228positionen. In: C. Habel, M. Herweg & K. Rehkaempfer (eds.): Raumkonzepte in Verstehensprozessen. T\252bingen: Niemeyer. 99-127. -Herskovits, Annette. 1985. Semantics and Pragmatics of Locative Expressions. Cognitive Science 9:341-378. -Herskovits, A. 1986. Language and Spatial Cognition. Cambridge University Press. -Hottenroth, P. 1981. Italien a - allemand an : une analyse contrastive. In: C. Schwarze (ed.) Analse des pr\233positions. T\252bingen: Niemeyer. -Jackendoff, R. & Landau, B., 1995. Spatial Language and Spatial Cognition. In: Jackendoff, R. Languages of the Mind. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. -Miller G. & Johnson-Laird, P, 1976. Language and Perception. Cambridge, Mass.: Belkamp. -Pustejovsky, J., 1995. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. -Seliverstova O.N., Malyar T.N. (1998). Prostranstvenno-distantsionnye predlogi i narechiya v russkom i angliyskom yazykah (Space and distance in some Russian and English prepositions and adverbs). Slavistische Beitraege: Band 362. Sagner, Muenchen. (Victor Peckar comments: 'especially extensive on this topic. The authors distinguish between various types of functional relations between objects, such as possessive, psychosocial etc, and ways in which Figure and Ground may switch the roles of Agent and Actant of the functions.') -Vandeloise, C. (1992). Analysis of the preposition dans. Lexique. Vol: 11, 1992, 15-40 -Vandeloise, C. (1986). L'espace en francais. Paris: Editions du Seuil. (English: Spatial Prepositions. University of Chicago Press.1991) -Wesche, B., 1987. At ease with 'At'. Journal of Semantics 5. 385-399. (B) Query 10.587.3 clarifies my vaguely formulated typological question. One finds functional specialisation in languages like Turkish, Indonesian which have a generalised locative marker which covers most of the ground of Eng. 'at', 'in' and 'on'. The only detailed analysis I have read is Becker 1994 above for Turkish. For Korean I received the tip: Bowerman, M. (1996). Learning how to structure space for language. In P. Bloom, et al. (Eds.), Language and space. MIT Press. (D) [P+bare N] structures like 'in school, in bed, in store', German 'bei Tisch', French 'en voiture' often show functional specialisation, cf. 'the champagne on ice' vs. '*the ice tongs/empty bottle on ice' (ice has a cooling function here) or French 'en vitrine' (on display in the display window) vs. 'dans la vitrine' (in the display window for another reason). These PP's often form idiosyncratic paradigms (e.g. 'in hospital' (non-American.) vs. '*in clinic'). I was wondering if P+bare N is some type of lexically generated construction, but there is no good evidence for this. Probably much of the semantics of these constructions has less to do with the prep. than the absence of the article. As Bart Geurts notes, one doesn't want to say that 'to' has different entries in 'they took him to hospital' and 'they took him to the hospital on Elm St'. On the other hand, it is interesting that French has a clear division of labour between 'dans' and 'en' (both='in'), such that the latter mostly has an articleless complement and gets a functional/idiomatic reading. (On 'en', cf. Franckel, J. & Lebaud, D. 1991. Diversit\233 des valeurs et invariance du fonctionnement de en pre\233position et pr\233verbe. Langue Fran\231aise 91: 56-79 (whole issue of journal devoted to preps.)) Are 'en/dans' an instance of suppletion or are they distinct preps? I would be grateful for further info. Pierre Larrivee informs me that the presumed rarity of articleless constructions in French is a myth (cf. Ruwet's book 'Syntax and Human Experience') For articleless constructions in general, cf. -Stvan, Laurel Smith. 1993. Activity Implicatures and Possessor Implicatures: What Are Locations When There Is No Article? In 29th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. -Stvan, Laurel Smith. 1998. The Semantics and Pragmatics of Bare Singular Noun Phrases. Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. -Stvan, Laurel Smith. 1999. Bare Singular NPs as Generic Expressions. Paper read at Linguistic Society of America, Jan. 8, 1999, at Los Angeles. Have a nice day, Andrew McIntyre *********************** Dr. Andrew McIntyre Institut fuer Anglistik, Universitaet Leipzig Bruehl 34 04109 Leipzig Particle Verb Project homepage: http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~part Tel (home): 0341-983 0602 (from Australia:001149-341 983 0602) Tel (work): 0341-9737 328 (from Australia:001149-341 9 7373 28) Fax: 0341-9737 329 Privatadresse: Shakespearestr. 3 04107 Leipzig Germany |
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| LL Issue: | 10.702 | |
| Date Posted: | 08-May-1999 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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