Cognitive Analysis Of Spatial Prepositions AT, ON And IN

Spatial prepositions are an important part of the English language. The thesis analyzes them within the framework of two linguistic schools: traditional grammar and cognitive linguistics. The former one has a long history and exerts influence on many linguistic trends while the latter one is quite a new linguistic school which is cross-disciplinary and proposes a brand-new perspective on the way of knowing the world and language. The description from the traditional grammar helps English learning and teaching a lot but lacks a well-structured and comprehensive analysis of senses of prepositions. On the other hand, cognitive linguistics advocates that language is not the direct reflection of the world but embodied in the physical experience of the world; and space becomes the basis of knowing the world and spatial relation becomes the origin to extend into other abstract fields. Thus, a system based on space is built to explain how knowledge of the world and the language system are formed. It is metaphor and metonymy that make extensions from space to other abstract fields possible. Metaphor and metonymy are not figures of speech any more, but cognitive mechanisms.The three spatial prepositions at, on and in are chosen since they make up of a trinity of point, line/surface and volume and are also the only topological prepositions in English and the present study can lay a good foundation for researches on other prepositions. Their senses from traditional grammar are summarized since they are relatively exhaustive collections and are helpful to classification of these senses in cognitive linguistic perspective. Based on the theoretical prerequisites of cognitive linguistics on spatial prepositions, it is hypothesized that there are two levels of classification in analyzing senses of spatial prepositions: relationships between TR and LM and the domains of LM. In order to show the real use of the three spatial prepositions, instances of at, on and in from the corpus of Book Four of New Horizon College English are collected and they are analyzed in terms of relationship and domain. It is also hypothesized in the thesis that the spatial relation is the original relation expressed by the three spatial prepositions and the other abstract relations are extended from the spatial relation through metaphor and metonymy. Moreover, in spatial relation, non-space concepts can be considered as space to act as target domains.In the end, it comes to the conclusion that as long as the cognitive analysis of the spatial relation of the three spatial prepositions is mastered, the senses in other abstract relations can be understood based on it. More importantly, the study of spatial prepositions from the cognitive linguistic perspective creates a new way of thinking in knowing the world and language. Furthermore, in teaching and learning English, trying to find out relations among senses can help find out how they are formed.