Prepositions shape frames for abstract events: A quantitative study of spatial-to-abstract mapping in english science writing

Christoph Haase

Prepositions shape frames for abstract events: A quantitative study of spatial-to-abstract mapping in english science writing

Vol.2,No.2(2009)

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Adpositions form closed lexical classes in English which provide cognitive access to representations of complex scenes and events. In academic texts from the domain of natural sciences, these lexical items help build conceptualisations of abstract relationships between phenomena that cannot be perceived directly. As a consequence, any phenomenon that can be hypothesised or measured in the natural sciences can be mediated and transferred into comprehensible processes via linguistic markers by way of “experiential correlation” and subsequent metaphorical extension. This extension is systematically grammaticalised in prepositional phrases.

Keywords:
corpora; academic English; prepositions; metaphor; cognitive linguistics; conceptualisation; spatial; popular science; image schema; abstractness

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