Conceptual metaphor as a mechanism behind figurative sense extensions of the spatial preposition at and its Polish equivalents
Conceptual metaphor as a mechanism behind figurative sense extensions of the spatial preposition at and its Polish equivalents

Author(s): Maria Brenda
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: cognitive semantics; spatial prepositions;conceptual metaphor;
Summary/Abstract: The recent cognitive research into spatial prepositions have shed light on the rich semantic structures spatial prepositions usually encode. Prepositional semantics is typically conceived of as a conceptual category with a prototype at the center and extended senses at various distances away from it. The extended senses may encode spatial scenes other than the one encoded by the prototype, or they may be metaphorical in nature. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that most, if not all, spatial prepositions have metaphorical meaning components in their semantic networks. The proposed study investigates the figurative senses of the spatial preposition at encoding the concept of coincidence. It aims to demonstrate that the cognitive mechanisms of conceptual metaphor account for its figurative sense extensions. The question of Polish equivalence is also taken into consideration. The senses of the Polish spatial prepositions w, na, przy, and o are discussed to determine to what extent they are motivated by the same metaphorical processes.

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