A presente tese tem como objetivo estudar as preposições passíveis de interpretação causal em alemão e português, de forma contrastiva, com base no processo de gramaticalização e enfoque sincrônico. Para este estudo foi feito um levantamento das preposições consideradas causais ou com acepção causal na literatura. A seguir, foram recolhidas ocorrências em alemão e português para a composição de um corpus, cujas ocorrências foram testadas para que pudesse ou não ser atestado o caráter causal das preposições, além de ter sido desenvolvido um quadro para mostrar o seu grau de gramaticalização. A fim de explicar como a interpretação causal é conferida às preposições, propôs-se um desmembramento do domínio QUALIDADE proposto por Heine et al. (1991), visto que de acordo com o estudo, a noção de causa advém por meio de relações de contiguidade metonímica não só dos domínios PESSOA, ESPAÇO e TEMPO, mas também dos grupos modo, condição, instrumento, finalidade e tema, noções que provavelmente se encontram no domínio QUALIDADE / This thesis aims to contrastively study prepositions that enable causal interpretation in German and Portuguese, based on the process of Grammaticalization and with a synchronic approach. For this study, a collection of prepositions considered causal or with causal meaning in the literature was made. Thereafter, occurrences in German and Portuguese were collected to compose a corpus. Then, these occurrences have been tested in order to prove or not the possibility of the causal character of the prepositions analyzed. Also, a table has been developed to show the degree of grammaticalization of these prepositions. In order to explain how the causal interpretation is given to prepositions, we propose a breakdown of the domain QUALITY proposed by Heine et al. (1991), since according to the study, the notion of cause comes through the relationships of metonymical contiguity not only from the domains PERSON, SPACE and TIME, but also from the mode, condition, instrument, goal and theme groups, concepts that are likely to be found within the domain QUALITY

Este trabalho traz uma comparação das posposições de caso NI, DE e WO da língua japonesa com preposições do português, baseada no aparato teórico da semântica cognitiva, e centrada nas estruturas semânticas das posposições de caso desenhadas por Moriyama (2005). Como resultado, elaboramos tabelas com as diversas preposições que podem ser mapeadas em cada uma das várias acepções das posposições estudadas. Cremos que este trabalho traga contribuições para o ensino do japonês a aprendizes lusófonos, bem como para a prática da tradução entre as línguas japonesa e portuguesa. / This work contains a comparison between the Japanese case markers NI, DE and WO, and Portuguese prepositions, based on the theoretic framework of cognitive semantics and centered on semantic structures of Japanese case markers as described by Moriyama (2005). As a result, we have made tables with the several prepositions that can be mapped into each one of the several senses of the case markers studied here. We believe that this work brings contributions for Japanese language teaching to Portuguese-speaking students, as well as to the practice of translation between Japanese and Portuguese.

English prepositions cause problems for learners of English. The way prepositions are taught has impact on how students learn. Using corpora in teaching makes it possible for teachers and pupils to explore language together and is a good alternative to filling in missing prepositions on worksheets. Sometimes linguistic errors are caused by mother tongue interference. Little research has been made earlier with a Swedish contrastive approach to prepositions but a great deal of literature concern language transfer and mother tongue interference. This essay is written on the assumption that Swedish as a first language interferes with English and causes prepositional mistakes. Two classes of ninth graders participated in my investigation. I wanted to find out if students performed better when they had given answers to choose from or when they had to produce the preposition themselves. My study proved that pupils had a better knowledge of prepositions perceptively than productively. It also proved that learners resorted to Swedish when they did not know the correct answer. Many learners fail to recognise prepositions as parts of multiword expressions. By teaching students how to notice grammatical collocations and lexical chunks we can help them to achieve acceptable levels of language proficiency and accuracy.

This essay investigates native Swedish speakers’ problems in the area of prepositions. A total of 19 compositions, including 678 prepositions, written by native Swedish senior high school students were analysed. All the prepositions in the material were judged as either basic, systematic or idiomatic. Then all the errors of substitution, addition and omission were counted and corrected. As hypothesised, least errors were found in the category of basic prepositions and most errors were found in the category of idiomatic prepositions. However, the small difference between the two categories of systematic and idiomatic prepositions suggests that the learners have greater problems with systematic prepositions than what was first thought to be the case. Basic prepositions cause little or no problems. Systematic prepositions, i.e. those that are rule governed or whose usage is somehow generalisable, seem to be quite problematic to native Swedish speakers. Idiomatic prepositions seem to be learnt as ‘chunks’, and the learners are either aware of the whole constructions or do not use them at all. They also cause some problems for Swedish speakers. Since prepositions are often perceived as rather arbitrary without rules to sufficiently describe them, these conclusions might not be surprising to teachers, students and language learners. The greatest error cause was found to be interference from Swedish, and a few errors could be explained as intralingual errors. It seems as if the learners’ knowledge of their mother tongue strongly influences the acquisition of English prepositions.

M.A. (Afrikaans) / In this epic poem, Raka, N.P. van Wyk Louw made abundant use of prepositions. A linguistic analysis of these preposition structures explains and reveals the nature of this syntactic category in Afrikaans. From this it is evident that prepositions are vital in accomplishing cohesion in the text. Cognitive linguistics argue that syntactic organisation and semantics cannot stand independently from each other. Therefore the meaning of 'n phrase of expression cannot be reduced to an objective categorization of the situation that is being described. Against this background it is evident that structures conveying meaning are expressed through prepositions and prepositional structures. Certain semantic values and meaning structures of prepositions in RAKA are dealt with to help clarify some implied cognitive dimensions. A closer analysis shows that the preposition structures in RAKA represent intricate syntactic patterns. The semantic values of prepositions in RAKA are categorized through image schemas in terms of space Qncluding place, perspective and proximity), time, movement, part-whole, reason and cause, as well as manner and means. Finally it is indicated how the epic structures can be made more explicable by image schemas. Through the use of prepositions in the language, aspects of the epic, namely characterization, time and spatial placing are endorsed. Progression, in terms or epic movement is supported through the use of prepositions that specifically imply space and movement. It is therefore apparent that although the research was approached from a linguistic angle, it also contributes to literary analysis.

This study investigates prepositional errors that Swedish 16-year-old students of English produce. The study attempts to understand why English L2 students in Sweden struggle with prepositions by looking at research within the SLA field regarding transfer, interlanguage transfer, implicit and explicit learning. The only extra-linguistic variable included in the study is the variable of gender. The method used to investigate students’ prepositional errors was to hand out a two-part test on prepositions to the students in one Grade 9 class in Sweden. The data was then analyzed and categorized to identify in what construction (PP as adjectival complements, PP as verb complements or PP as adverbials) Swedish students of English produce the most errors. The first part of the test was a fill-in-the-blanks test investigating the students’ productive knowledge. The second part of the test was a grammatical judgement test (GJT) assessing the students’ receptive knowledge. The test was divided into two different parts not to favor one particular test form. The test included a total of 22 students from one class, including 12 male and 10 female students. 8 out of the 22 students answered that they had another L1 than Swedish. A majority of these have lived in Sweden their whole lives, and only two answered that they arrived later in life. In contrast with earlier research and statistics, which show that female students perform academically better than male students, the test showed a clear advantage by the male students in the class. The male students performed better on both parts of the test. The most problematic PP construction for both genders was PP functioning as adjectives. The most common prepositional error that the students performed in the test was negative transfer from Swedish to English.

The present study was designed to determine the ages at which a sample of children between eighteen and forty-two months verbally and correctly express the fourteen prepositions known to be acquired by age four, using the Revised Expressive Preposition Test (REPT). The REPT was administered to sixty children chosen from day care centers and private homes within the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon. Therewas no preference as to the sex, intelligence of the child or socio- economic status of the child's family. A statistical analysis was performed to determine the correlation between HEPT scores and the child's chronological age, mental age and the socioeconomic status of the child's family. Results show that expressive prepositions tend to be acquired at different age levels. Each age group tended to use a progressively greater number of the prepositions. None of the eighteen month olds used any of the prepositions. Only one-fourth of the twenty-four month olds used any of the prepositions. Half or more of the thirty month olds expressed the prepositions "under," "on," "in" and "up." Half or more of the thirty-six month olds expressed the prepositions "out of," "at," "in" and "up," but not "under" and "on." Half or more of the forty-two month olds expressed the prepositions "to, II, "out of," "under," "around," "at," "of," "with" and "up." One hundred per cent of the forty-two month olds also used the prepositions "in" and "on." The prepositions which were never expressed by 50 per cent of any of the children were "behind," "across," "off" and "by." A statistical analysis of the data revealed a moderate correlation between the children's REPT scores and their chronological ages (.68). Correlation coefficients indicated a high correlation between the children's REFT scores and their combined chronological and mental ages (.82). The children's SES scores did not correlate with REPT scores (1 per cent) when considered together with chronological and mental ages.

Prepositions are not only important in functional syntax; they also relate meanings associated with the concepts of place and time (Washington & Naremore, 1978). Furthermore, prepositions are critical in such everyday activities as producing and comprehending directions, using maps and diagrams, and in the fields of mathematics and music (Cox & Richardson, 1985). Inefficient use or misuse of prepositional spatial terms may hinder a child's progress in many areas. Expressive acquisition of function words, which include prepositions, has been described as significantly delayed in the hearing impaired populations (Cooper & Rosenstein, 1966). The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative preposition analysis between hearing impaired children using two different modes of communication. The question this researcher sought to answer was: Do 54 severely-to-profoundly hearing impaired children in this study using total communication differ in the expressive acquisition of 17 locative and directional prepositions from 35 hearing impaired children in a previous study (Warlick, 1983) using oral/aural communication?

Learning to use prepositions in English as a second language (L2) has been widely acknowledged to pose significant difficulties to learners, especially within metaphorical contexts. Difficulties relate to the complex distributional patterns of prepositions in discourse, namely, the variety of collocations requiring their use, as well as cross-linguistic differences both at the structural and conceptual levels. Studies in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has thus far described learner usage of metaphorical prepositions as “errors”, without placing much detailed attention upon the lexical, conceptual and contextual nuances that may impinge on their uses. Furthermore, scarce attention to the value of learners’ semantic and conceptual patterns in preposition phrasal collocations has led to ineffective memorization-driven instruction. While it is acknowledged that prepositions are difficult for L2 learners, more or less difficulty in learning metaphorical collocations of prepositions within specific prepositional phrases has scarcely been researched, for which this study attempted to provide an initial understanding. This dissertation included a mixed methods and cross-sectional design, where instances of preposition use within two types of metaphorical constructions were explored by means of a semi-structured interview. Extents to which participants may have engaged in spatial thinking while using prepositions metaphorically were also explored through the design of a spatial priming task. The two types of metaphorical constructions focused upon in the study were prepositional phrases complementing the copula (PP-copula constructions) and prepositional phrases complementing prepositional verbs (PP-prepV constructions). Participants included learners of English with L1 Spanish ranging from low intermediate to advanced proficiencies, as well as English native speakers as a comparison group. From a syntax and semantics perspective, both PP-copula and PP-prepV constructions were be deemed to pose difficulties to learners, but to different extents and in relation to several phenomena such as knowledge of conventionality, potential metaphorical conceptualizations, and L1 influence. The study explored patterns and changes in metaphorical preposition use across groups within the two construction types of interest, illuminating trends in conventionality, as well as persistence and changes in metaphorical conceptualizations across proficiencies (“trajectories”). Interrelationships between L1 influence and the incorporation of L2 English patterns were identified in learners’ interlanguage collocations, and were compared across proficiencies. Additionally, potential relationships were explored between participants’ metaphorical preposition uses, and aspects of language experience collected by means of a language background questionnaire. Results suggest that metaphorical PP-prepV constructions tend to contribute more to learners’ repertoires of lexical collocations as proficiency increased compared to metaphorical PP-copula constructions. Conventionality in preposition use was observed to increase with proficiency, especially within metaphorical PP-prepV constructions. Linguistic and conceptual “trajectories” revealed that learners worked with networks of conventional and unconventional preposition collocations. Some unconventional collocations persisted across proficiencies in reference to specific abstract notions, while others shifted toward NS lexical and conceptual conventionality when referring to other abstract notions. The study also shed light on participants’ engagement in spatial thinking while processing prepositions in metaphorical contexts. The discussion highlights lexical and conceptual networks relative to particular abstract notions, as well as L1 and L2 influence in learners’ interlanguage collocations. This study could be relevant to language teachers in offering insight into patterns and changes in L2 learners’ metaphorical preposition use within specific domains of discourse. Findings could provide possible conceptual and lexical starting points among intermediate and advanced proficiencies in relation to specific prepositional phrase constructions, from which teachers could provide scaffolding to promote expansion of learners’ L2 lexical repertoires.

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