‘I got into the room by means of a picklock key and found him’ Complex Prepositions in Early Modern English

English complex prepositions can be subdivided into two-word and three-word sequences, the former containing an adverb, adjective or conjunction together with a simple preposition (i.e. instead ADV of PREP ); and the latter being composed of a preposition + noun + preposition (i.e. by PREP means NOUN of PREP ) (Quirk et al. 1985: 669-670). The complex prepositions BY WAY OF and BY MEANS OF are the result of a process of grammaticalization in which they lost part of their lexical functions and later were reanalysed as functional elements expressing instrumentality (Hoffman 2005: 71-76). From an etymological point of view, these words have different backgrounds. The word WAY, on the one hand, can be traced back to the Old English period (c. 950), with the meaning of ‘road, path’ (OED). MEAN, on the other, is a French borrowing, first attested in 1374, with the meaning of ‘an intermediary agent or instrument’ (OED). As complex prepositions in English, BY WAY OF and BY MEANS OF were first attested in 1390 and 1427, respectively (OED). The present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: 1) to assess the grammaticalization process by which nouns such as WAY and MEAN developed prepositional functions meaning instrumentality; 2) to analyse the use and distribution of BY WAY OF and BY MEANS OF in the History of English; and 3) to determine any likely preference in terms of the informants’ gender and social class. The source of evidence comes from the the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and the Old Bailey Corpus.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Граматикалізація як передумова для функціонально-граматичної транспозиції (Grammaticalization as precondition for functional and grammatical transposition)

Стаття присвячена вивченню явища граматикалізації службових слів в сучасній англійській мові, на прикладі темпоральних та локативних прийменників. Визначено три основні групи прийменників – первині граматичні, складені однослівні та комплексні багатослівні та схеми їх граматикалізації. Встановлено зв’язок між процесами граматикалізації та функціонально-граматичної транспозиції. (The paper focuses on the phenomenon of functional words grammaticalization in Present day English. The object of investigation is represented by temporal and local prepositions. Three main groups of prepositions, namely primary grammatical, compound one-word and complex multi-constituent have been singled out. The relationship between the processes of grammaticalization and functional and grammatical transposition has been revealed. The higher the level of grammaticalization is, the lower the transpositional potential of the lexeme is and vice versa. The above-mentioned groups of prepositions occupy different places on the «transposition-grammaticalization» scale. Thus, primary prepositions are highly grammaticalized units and therefore their transpositional potential is quite low. On the contrary, the level of grammaticalization of compound oneword prepositions is low and their transpositional potential is high. Complex multiconstituent prepositions are still undergoing the process of grammaticalization and at this stage it is impossible to estimate probable level of their transpositional potential.

Preposisi Dalam Kitab Kejadian

This research entitled “The Prepositions in the Book of Genesis in the Bible” it is written to identify and classify the form and analyze the meaning of the prepositions that is used in the book of Genesis in the Bible. In analyzing the data, the writer used theory based on Aarts and Aarts (1982) to classifying the forms of prepositionsand Curme's theory (1986) in analyzing the meaning of prepositions as a part of descriptive method. The data were taken from the book of Genesis in the Bible based on the Holy Bible New International Version, International Bible Society. The form of the prepositions that founded in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, such as simple preposition (one-word preposition) consist of: at, before, from, in, between, by, during, of, on, since, until, and with, whereas complex preposition (multi-word preposition) consist of: according to, as to, because of, in addition to, in front of, and out of. Then, the meaning of the prepositions that founded, consist of: refer to place, time, cause or reason, purpose, source, cause or reason, manner, instrument, participation, characteristic, possessive, amount, measure and conquest

German particle verbs and pleonastic prepositions

This paper discusses the behaviour of German particle verbs formed by two-way prepositions in combination with pleonastic PPs including the verb particle as a preposition. These particle verbs have a characteristic feature: some of them license directional prepositional phrases in the accusative, some only allow for locative PPs in the dative, and some particle verbs can occur with PPs in the accusative and in the dative. Directional particle verbs together with directional PPs present an additional problem: the particle and the preposition in the PP seem to provide redundant information. The paper gives an overview of the semantic verb classes inuencing this phenomenon, based on corpus data, and explains the underlying reasons for the behaviour of the particle verbs. We also show how the restrictions on particle verbs and pleonastic PPs can be expressed in a grammar theory like Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG)

A computational model of the referential semantics of projective prepositions

In this paper we present a framework for interpreting locative expressions containing the prepositions in front of and behind. These prepositions have different semantics in the viewer-centred and intrinsic frames of reference (Vandeloise, 1991). We define a model of their semantics in each frame of reference. The basis of these models is a novel parameterized continuum function that creates a 3-D spatial template. In the intrinsic frame of reference the origin used by the continuum function is assumed to be known a priori and object occlusion does not impact on the applicability rating of a point in the spatial template. In the viewer-centred frame the location of the spatial template’s origin is dependent on the user’s perception of the landmark at the time of the utterance and object occlusion is integrated into the model. Where there is an ambiguity with respect to the intended frame of reference, we define an algorithm for merging the spatial templates from the competing frames of reference, based on psycholinguistic observations in (Carlson-Radvansky, 1997)

A Web Smart Space Framework for Intelligent Search Engines

A web smart space is an intelligent environment which has additional capability of searching the information smartly and efficiently. New advancements like dynamic web contents generation has increased the size of web repositories. Among so many modern software analysis requirements, one is to search information from the given repository. But useful information extraction is a troublesome hitch due to the multi-lingual; base of the web data collection. The issue of semantic based information searching has become a standoff due to the inconsistencies and variations in the characteristics of the data. In the accomplished research, a web smart space framework has been proposed which introduces front end processing for a search engine to make the information retrieval process more intelligent and accurate. In orthodox searching anatomies, searching is performed only by using pattern matching technique and consequently a large number of irrelevant results are generated. The projected framework has insightful ability to improve this drawback and returns efficient outcomes. Designed framework gets text input from the user in the form complete question, understands the input and generates the meanings. Search engine searches on the basis of the information provided

UNDERSTANDING PREPOSITIONS THROUGH COGNITIVE GRAMMAR. A CASE OF IN

Poly - semantic nature of prepositions has been discussed in linguistic literature and confirmed by language data. In the majority of research within cognitive linguistics prepositions have been approached as predicates organising entities in space, with less attention paid to the search for a meaning schema sanctioning the numerous uses. Cognitive Grammar analytic tools allow for the analysis which results in discovering one meaning schema sanctioning the uses of the English preposition in. The present analysis is based on the assumption that the meaning schema of in profiles a relation of conceptual enclosure between two symbolic structures, one of which conceptually fits in the other. Accordingly, I argue that the speaker employs in to structure a real scene not because one element of the scene can physically enclose the other one, but due to conceptual ‘fitting in’ holding between the predication ‘preceding’ the preposition and the one that ‘follows’. In formal terms, the usage of in is conditioned and sanctioned by compatibility of active zones in the predications used to form the complex language expression involved. Peculiarities of physical organization may be ignored in such conceptualisation, though the speaker can choose to encode all peculiarities of physical organisation of real world objects employing different linguistic devices