대한언어학회 전자저널

You, Seon Young. (2015). A Cognitive Analysis of the Meanings of the English Spatial Prepositions AT, ON, IN. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal 23(3), 173-189. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meanings of at, on, and in within the framework of Cognitive Grammar, and to examine the application of their basic meanings in various situations. To begin with, I have schematically conceptualized the basic meanings of each preposition as the landmark, a point of location at which the trajector is situated in a spatial domain. And then using metaphorical extensions from the spatial domain, I have tried to establish its extended meanings in a metaphorical and abstract domain. In this paper, I analyze at, on, and in as basically profiling the spatial relation between two things, trajector and landmark. It is commonly called the basic meanings. Also, three prepositions, at, on, and in, can profile the situation where the spatial relation is extended to accommodate the usages of at, on, and in. Besides the basic meanings, they can also profile a metaphorical abstract as its extended usage. Their own extended meanings are easily understood when we realize the basic meanings of at, on, and in. When the basic meanings of these three prepositions are set up in spatial concepts, the regularity in using these prepositions can be applied consistently not only in spatial relations but also in abstract relations.

# 인지문법(cognitive grammar) # 인지적 분석(cognitive analysis) # 공간 전치사(spatial prepositions) # 탄도체(trajector) # 지표(landmark)