A Contrastive Study On The Semantic Network Of Preposition “of” In The Master Theses Abstracts Of American And Chinese English Learners

From the perspective of cognitive linguistics,English prepositions are capable of expressing many spatial meanings in addition to the role of linking.They are polysemous,which stems from the language users’ own perception of spatial location.Prepositions often have a central meaning with a spatial conception,and through the embodied meaning,a number of spatial uses are derived,forming a system of network structures.The preposition ’of’ is one of the most frequently used prepositions,but its semantics has not attracted much attention from scholars in the field of academic writing.Through referring to some dictionaries,this thesis,on the primary basis of the Principled Polysemy Network Model,takes the pattern “NP1+of+NP2” in two self-built corpora as the research subject,and compares the distribution of “of”senses and clusters in two corpora(Corpus of American Learners’ Abstract,CALA;Corpus of Chinese Learners’ Abstract,CCLA)based on the result from chi-square test.The results are as follows: in terms of “of” cluster in CALA and CCLA,on cluster makes up the highest proportion,and for cluster accounts for the least occupant;as for the senses,the of-periphrasis sense takes the greatest proportion,the proto-scene and location source take up the least proportion.Through the chi-square test,there is no difference in the senses of boundary,caused-by and purpose,but there are differences shown in the senses of of-periphrasis,concern,containing,from,belong-to,completed-by and focus.After analyzing the underlying cause of the result,we find that the similarities lie in two respects: the same storage memory and the same profile,and the differences reside in multiple aspects,including the different cognitive model in Chinese and English,the polysemy of preposition,the language borrowing and the application of metaphorical meaning.By means of the analysis on the similarities and differences,some suggestions on preposition teaching in English can be proposed effectively,including the improvement of preposition comparison,the integration with culture and history and the application of image schema.This thesis not only enriches the theoretical fruit of “of” under the Principled Polysemy Network Model,but embodies some implications for preposition teaching.However,there are still some limitations,including the lack of diachronic study,the small scale of the corpus,etc.