This paper expands upon the work done by Cathey (2002) in his Hêliand: Text and Commentary by examining three Old Saxon prepositions defined in his glossary as “prepositions with various meanings.” By examining the contexts in which these prepositions occur and the substantial body of German scholarship on the issue, in particular Sehrt (1925), Sievers (1878), and Behaghel (1897), as well as English translations such as Murphy (1992) and Scott (1966), sets of possible English glosses for each of these three prepositions can be established. / text

This study investigates how learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) whose first language (L1) is Swedish select prepositions in the English language. The study involves two groups, the participants and their respective controls. The participants are advanced EFL students at a Swedish university and their controls are intermediate EFL speakers who are no longer enrolled in an EFL course. The aim of the present psycholinguistic investigation is to elucidate the process of the preposition selection in EFL by means of a think-aloud-protocol. The present study involves the assumption that preposition selection by Swedish EFL learners is based on both implicitly and explicitly acquired knowledge. Data analysis indicates that the participants’ EFL preposition selection is influenced by their L1 knowledge. The results suggest that EFL preposition selection does not differ significantly between the two groups. However, the results are indicative of a variation in EFL preposition selection between the two groups in an EFL proficiency test and a think-aloud-protocol.

The purpose of this dissertation is to empirically test the hypothesis that children's omission of functional elements reflects performance factors (McKee, 1994; McKee & Iwasaki, 2001), rather than lack of knowledge (Felix, 1987; Radford, 1990, 1995; Tomasello, 2000). The multi-level production system treats content and function morphemes differently (Garrett, 1982). Further, a function morpheme's free or bound status and the independence of the content stem affect the likelihood that a function morpheme will be omitted. Four experiments each employed production and comprehension tasks testing English- and Icelandic-speaking children's and adults' production and comprehension of different prepositional phrases. The English experiments tested prepositional phrases with content prepositions and content/function preposition combinations. The Icelandic experiments tested prepositional phrases with prepositions and their associated case markings. Function prepositions in English and case markings in Icelandic both convey information about case, with the former being a free function morpheme, and the latter a bound function morpheme. Both English- and Icelandic-speaking children showed comprehension of prepositions that they do not produce. Further, Icelandic-speaking children produced case markings but English-speaking children did not produce function prepositions. These findings support a performance-based hypothesis with omission attributable to coordination issues among elements in the multi-level production system. These findings also show the importance of cross-modality and cross-linguistic research in studying the competence of children before, during, and after the telegraphic speech stage.

This thesis by publication presents a study on English adpositions (e.g. to, in, at, from, in frontof, through). It attempts to offer a solution to the following three outstanding problems, whichare presented in each of the three parts making up the thesis, preceded by a general introduction(chapter 1) and followed by the general conclusions (chapter 7). The first part includes chapter2, and discusses the problem of What is the relation between adpositions and the non-linguistic,visual content they represent. The second part includes chapters 3 and 4, and discusses theproblem ofwhat is a proper compositional theory of the Syntax and Semantics of adpositions.The third part includes chapters 5 and 6, and discusses the problem of what is the psychologicalreality of this theory, regarding adults and children’s data.The following three solutions are suggested. First, the relation between adpositions and theircorresponding visual information is an isomorphism: adpositions capture how we “see” possiblespatio-temporal relations between objects, at a flexible level of fine-grainedness. Second, aproper compositional treatment of adpositions treats each syntactic unit (in front, of ) as offeringa distinct semantic contribution, hence spelling out a restricted instance of a spatio-temporalpart-of relation. Third, this compositional treatment of adpositions can also stand as a theory ofon-line interpretation in adults and a theory of their acquisition in children.These three answers are couched within a single theoretical approach, that of Discourse Representation Theory, and offer a unified solution to three apparently distinct problems regardingspatial adpositions and their linguistic properties.

This thesis by publication presents a study on English adpositions (e.g. to, in, at, from, in frontof, through). It attempts to offer a solution to the following three outstanding problems, whichare presented in each of the three parts making up the thesis, preceded by a general introduction(chapter 1) and followed by the general conclusions (chapter 7). The first part includes chapter2, and discusses the problem of What is the relation between adpositions and the non-linguistic,visual content they represent. The second part includes chapters 3 and 4, and discusses theproblem ofwhat is a proper compositional theory of the Syntax and Semantics of adpositions.The third part includes chapters 5 and 6, and discusses the problem of what is the psychologicalreality of this theory, regarding adults and children’s data.The following three solutions are suggested. First, the relation between adpositions and theircorresponding visual information is an isomorphism: adpositions capture how we “see” possiblespatio-temporal relations between objects, at a flexible level of fine-grainedness. Second, aproper compositional treatment of adpositions treats each syntactic unit (in front, of ) as offeringa distinct semantic contribution, hence spelling out a restricted instance of a spatio-temporalpart-of relation. Third, this compositional treatment of adpositions can also stand as a theory ofon-line interpretation in adults and a theory of their acquisition in children.These three answers are couched within a single theoretical approach, that of Discourse Representation Theory, and offer a unified solution to three apparently distinct problems regardingspatial adpositions and their linguistic properties.

The use-in-context of three lexical units - at, on and in - is analized in thousands of examples from the BROWN corpus of written American English. Syntactic scrutiny confirms the lexicon-grammar continuum, as far as particles cannot be categorized according to necessary and sufficient conditions. Semantic analysis is performed according to a polysemy model based on prototypes and radial categories. It is shown that the same semantic structure is common to all the uses of these particles, as a result of partial sanction and semantic extension of a single category. A prototype is posed for each category, based on topological, force-dynamic, and functional experiential dimensions, according to human perception of objects and their relationships. Particularly, the semantic structure of AT is developed on the basis of an ENCOUNTER schema, that of ON follows from a SUPPORT schema, and finally, that of IN derives from both an INCLUSION and a MEDIUM schema.

This study examines the semantic import of the French preposition à 'at/to' in argument alternations. In French, some verbs can be followed by a direct object or by an indirect object introduced by the preposition à 'at/to' (e.g., parer/parer à 'to ward off/to guard against', satisfaire/satisfaire à 'to satisfy', toucher/toucher à 'to touch', etc.). Although the preposition à 'at/to' has been characterized in the literature as a meaningless grammatical element, and more specifically so in cases of argument alternations, this study shows that à 'at/to' is meaningful and that it contributes to the semantics of the indirect transitive constructions of the verbs under scrutiny. Couched in the Cognitive Grammar theoretical framework (Langacker 1987b, 1991), this study is based on the assumption that grammar is meaningful and that the meaning of grammatical items is more abstract than the meaning of lexical items. Consequently, two abstract meanings characterizing à 'at/to' are proposed to account for the semantic differences between the direct and indirect transitive constructions of the verbs analyzed in this study: the expression of an abstract goal and the expression of an abstract localization. For some verbs, the indirect transitive construction entails a notion of goal that is not expressed in the direct transitive construction. For other verbs, à 'at/to' expresses an abstract relation (i.e., an abstract localization) between the lexical semantics of the verb and the indirect object, which results in meaning differences between the direct and indirect transitive constructions based on the notion of affectedness. Following Langacker (1987a), I view transitivity as a transfer of energy and propose that the various levels of energy involved in an event correlate with the various levels of affectedness of the object. I argue that à 'at/to' signals a disruption of energy leading to a lower affectedness of the indirect object than that of the direct object (see also Beavers 2011). Finally, I show that, for the verb toucher 'to touch', the semantic import of à 'at/to' varies in relation to the various senses of the indirect transitive construction of the verb. / text

The research in this thesis examines the influence that both geometric and extrageometric factors have on children's spatial language production. Over the years it has widely been assumed that spatial prepositions identif' where objects are in the world (geometric factors) and that this is reflected in the semantic representations of these words. More recently, researchers investigating the lexical semantics of spatial prepositions have begun to question this assumption by demonstrating that what objects are and how they are interacting can also affect the way we describe where they are in the world (extra-geometric factors). Following on from research conducted with adults that has demonstrated the importance of both of these factors on spatial language, the main aim of this thesis was to ascertain for the first time whether these factors also influenced children's spatial language production, and if so, when they became important in children's development of spatial expressions. Additionally, due to the paucity of research investigating the production of spatial terms, the Experiments reported in this theis set out to redress the balance. The research in this thesis demonstrated for the first time that both geometric and extra geometric factors influence the production of children's spatial expressions from an early age. In doing so, however, the Experiments reported here were not necessarily revealing as to the nature of the semantic representation of spatial terms, rather they highlighted a different issue; how people make distinctions during a verbal interaction. Evidence is presented that suggests a level of agreement between people regarding the nonconventional use of words. In order to distinguish between functional and non-functional situations, both adults and children used different types of spatial terms to locate an object even when they had a limited number of words in their lexicon. An approach to the whole process of prepositional production is suggested rather than concentrating on what is represented in an individual's lexicon.

Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-05-14T18:12:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao Davi Santana.pdf: 886354 bytes, checksum: df9f6bc73a11d1f1572f6ebfbe7f9371 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Alda Lima da Silva(sivalda@ufba.br) on 2013-06-04T21:11:23Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao Davi Santana.pdf: 886354 bytes, checksum: df9f6bc73a11d1f1572f6ebfbe7f9371 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-06-04T21:11:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao Davi Santana.pdf: 886354 bytes, checksum: df9f6bc73a11d1f1572f6ebfbe7f9371 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Esta pesquisa, de cunho funcionalista, intitulada Prefixos derivados de preposições em textos de Língua Portuguesa dos séculos XVII e XVIII, objetiva identificar os processos e os princípios de gramaticalização aplicáveis à mudança preposição > prefixo, bem como analisar os aspectos semânticos dessa mudança com base nas teorias do localismo e dos protótipos. A partir de um corpus constituído de 41 cartas do século XVII (Cartas do Maranhão, de Antônio Vieira, 8580 linhas) e 127 cartas do século XVIII (Cartas Baianas Setecentistas, 5500 linhas), comparam-se esses dois períodos entre si, com os dados etimológicos encontrados, principalmente, em Cunha (1991) e Romanelli (1964) e com os dados do século XIV, referentes às preposições, analisados por Poggio (2002). Julgou-se apropriado complementar a análise com a nova proposta de estudo multissitêmico da mudança lingüística de Castilho (2003), haja vista que os pressupostos da teoria da gramaticalização relacionados com o princípio da unidirecionalidade, que inclui a premissa do enfraquecimento ou “desbotamento” semântico dos itens que adquirem um maior caráter gramatical, têm sofrido muitas críticas em parte da literatura contemporânea sobre a gramaticalização, e também em razão das dificuldades encontradas em se comprovar a aplicabilidade de tais pressupostos em todos os casos de mudança preposição > prefixo analisados. / Salvador

M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / This study seeks to understand the acquisition of English prepositions by second language (L2) speakers of English. Prepositions are notoriously difficult linguistic items to acquire, and the reasons for this are manifold. This study looks into the relationship between the linguistic similarities between prepositions in the first language (L1) and the English prepositions in, on, to and into. The study focuses on two particular groups of L1 speakers: (i) Northern Sotho speakers and (ii) Afrikaans speakers. A group of monolingual English speakers acts as a control group according to which comparisons between L2 and L1 speakers are made. These three groups have been selected based on the manifestations of the selected English prepositions in each language. In Afrikaans, the four prepositions have similar linguistic features to their English counterparts, whereas in Northern Sotho, prepositions have a vastly different linguistic manifestation to English ones. This study therefore seeks to establish whether linguistic similarity in the L1 helps or hinders the acquisition of English prepositions in English as an L2. In order to achieve this aim, 120 participants between the ages of 5;3 (year;month) and 8;11 were selected from 23 primary schools in Gauteng that use English as a language of learning and teaching (LoLT). These participants were then tested in two stages. First, an oral English proficiency test (the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation) was performed. Second, the participants completed an elicited production procedure designed for the purposes of this research to test their understanding and ability to use the English prepositions under investigation. The process of development of this elicited production procedure involved a pilot study to which the Rasch measurement model was applied. The procedure was then adapted and improved. The Rasch measurement model was also applied to the English proficiency test in order to highlight areas or items within the test that may contain cultural bias in a South African context. The Rasch analysis identified various items within the test that were not appropriate within the South African context and these items were removed from the scoring procedure so as not to influence the results in a culturally-biased way. The results of the English proficiency test were then used to group the participants according to English ability (below average, average and above average). These ability groups form the basis upon which comparisons regarding the results of the preposition test are then made. The comparisons revealed some variance, but no significant differences between the Afrikaans and Northern Sotho speakers. There were, however, significant differences between the Afrikaans and Northern Sotho speakers in terms of their performance on the English proficiency test. The Northern Sotho speakers had more speakers in the below average group of English ability than the Afrikaans group, and fewer in the above average group. Another notable finding is the variation in difficulty when considering the type of preposition being acquired. Prepositions of motion (to and into) were more difficult to understand and produce for participants from both the Afrikaans and Northern Sotho groups. Although there was no significant difference between the groups, the Afrikaans speakers performed slightly better on the preposition test than the Northern Sotho group. Additionally, the errors made by the Afrikaans speakers were less varied than those made by the Northern Sotho speakers. The findings support the hypothesis that linguistic similarity between the L1 and L2 aids in learning English prepositions.