The transference from spatial to non-spatial meanings of “Over, Above, Under, Below = Chuyển di nghĩa không gian sang nghĩa phi không gian của “Over, Above, Under, Below”.pdf
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
This thesis focuses on explaining how meanings of the four words ―over, above, under, below‖ transfer from the spatial to non-spatial meanings within the 2017 Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), genre: Fiction This chapter will provide an overview of the research and other related contents of the study It starts with the rationale of the study, which is followed by the aims, objectives, research questions, scope, and significant assumptions in respect to meaning transference The research methods used in the study are then explained and the chapter ends with the structure of the thesis.
The rationale of the study
Space, a very ubiquitous notion in human cognition, is so appealing that numerous linguists have been trying to address it in the light of cognitive linguistics (CL), namely Brugman & Lakoff (1988), Boers (1996), Deane (2005), Dewell (1994), Kreitzer (1997), Lakoff (1987), Tyler & Evans (2003), Zlatev (2003), Van Der Gucht et al (2007), Roussel (2013), Gilles & Thierry (2014), Brenda (2014), and
Mori (2019) A general agreement in CL is that construing space structure serves as a basis for understanding non-spatial meanings (Croft & Cruse, 2004; Tyler & Evans, 2001, 2003) which are assumed to derive from spatial meanings (Lakoff, 1987; Tyler & Evans, 2001, 2003; Brenda, 2014; Mori, 2019)
The four prepositions over, above, under, and below, among others, represent the spatial zones that humans usually interact with in their daily activities Beside denoting spatial meanings, the four words are also exploited to denote abstract concepts Here are two examples:
(1) Dangers are over the man‟s head
(2) Year on year, the company is performing below par (Tyler & Evans, 2003)
English language users see that the speakers do not intentionally imply any spatial configurations in the physical world To be specific, on hearing the first sentence, construers would conjure up the imminent dangers which can do harm to the man
In this case, dangers can be from any directions, not necessarily from high above The second sentence takes the par as a referent point not for the company but for the value of the share which is now less than it was originally In order to provide explanation for such a usage, there are two proposals To start with, Lakoff & Johnson (1980), and Boers (1996) accounted for the meaning transference 1 in such sentences to be image-schema transformations Tyler & Evans (2003) analyzed such usages in reference to the encyclopedic knowledge and metaphor, showing that two mechanisms for meaning transference are perceptual resemblance and experiential correlation Both approaches have their own merits, but a literature review suggests that they should be complementary to each other
The use of over in the following headline from BBC might not be specific enough to be visualized:
(3) “Expel him”: The British Ambassador in hot water over joke
A componential analysis of the above sentence provides readers with a structure of a prepositional phrase (in hot water) + over + a noun phrase (joke) It is observed that if the prepositional phrase refers to an unpleasant feeling or experience, the noun phrase succeeding over could be the cause or reason Several questions may appear in human mind about how language generates How could ―over” be used in such contexts because the meaning of over is not spatial at all? Are there any other candidates that could substitute ―over”? Could the understanding of image-schemas help readers explain the use of ―over” or it is the combination of image-schemas and other concepts? Additionally, the four words are in our foci because they constitute two pairs of synonyms ―over-above‖, ―under-below‖, which cause difficulties for language learners and it was proved that prepositions in general are major obstacles for learners to overcome (Lam, 2009) Therefore, the result of the study can serve as a reference for learners Last but not least, over is one of the most specially cases in the English prepositions as insofar as fourteen authors have been
1 In this study, the researcher uses the term ―meaning‖ for what is denoted by the four words over, above, under, and below in their contexts of use
3 addressing it from different perspectives (Long and Huyen Trang, 2020) The above-mentioned discussion has inspired me to conduct a study with the title The transference from spatial to non-spatial meanings of “Over, Above, Under, Below”.
Aims, objectives and research questions
This study is conducted in reference to the assumption of CL that non-spatial meanings are grounded spatially (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987; Boers, 1996; Tyler & Evans, 2001, 2003) The aim of the thesis is to explain the processes of meaning transference from spatial to non-spatial meanings of the four words within a given corpus The mappings from space domain to non-spatial domains, image-schemas, and a range of conceptual metaphors associated with the four words were investigated to identify the mechanisms of meaning transference In respect to this aim, the objectives of the paper were to (i) identify the spatial and non-spatial meanings of the four words ―over, above, under, below‖; (ii) analyze how non-spatial meanings of the four words are mapped from space domain to other domains in association with a range of conceptual metaphors In order to realize the above objectives, the research has to answer the following two questions:
1 What are spatial and non-spatial meanings of over, above, under, below in their contexts of use?
2 How do the meanings of over, above, under, below transfer from the spatial to non-spatial meanings in their contexts of use?
As can be seen, the first task is to present spatial and non-spatial meanings of the four words and then the researcher must find out how the construal of spatial meanings help to interpret the non-spatial meanings of over, above, under, below in their contexts of use, or in other words, the above work would help to explore the meaning transference of over, above, under, below.
The scope of the study
Meaning transference is a notion/phenomenon of great complexity as it is related to not only linguistics but also other cognitive sciences such as neurology and psychology In order to account for the meaning transference of over, above, under,
4 below, the researcher mainly focuses his discussion on cognitive semantics, but the knowledge in neurology, psychology and mathematics has also been exploited An interdisciplinary approach would be overclaimed, but the researcher still makes some references to other sciences besides CL Turning to the part of speech of over, above, under, below, it is supposed that the researcher treats them as prepositions, particles, and adverbs while ignoring them as prefixes When the four words denote spatial configurations, they are sometime addressed ―spatial markers‖ However, if their meanings are not purely spatial in nature, they are sometime addressed ―non- spatial markers‖ An additional concern is the use of over, above, under, below in idiomatic expressions, which would be far afield to the original objectives of the research.
Significant assumptions of CL in this study
Basing on the advances in the field of cognitive sciences, especially CL in the last three decades, the following two assumptions to treat the meaning transference of over, above, under, below are significant in the thesis (adapted from Navarro, 1998 and Evans; 2009, 2015):
1 The semantic structure should represent the polysemy of a word with a prototypical meaning and extended meanings
2 Non-spatial meanings are grounded spatially and extended meanings of words are derived from the prototypical meaning
Philosophically, the above assumptions are represented as follows:
1 Linguistic phenomena are not objective
2 Language should be understood in terms of the social reality
3 Language plays an essential role in the development of thought and world view
Language, as we know it, is a product of human beings in the process of interaction with nature and with another one, and labor is the key to open new uses of a linguistic item for a particular purpose The use of any words, phrases or sentences is to express a state-of-affair, a state and so on In general, any utterances have their
5 own meanings and purposes, or in other words, they can serve as speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 2012) By saying this we mean that humans use language subjectively and due to the political changes or influences of technology, a linguistic item can die out and other register of a particular field would prevail An example of today‘s word is ―software‖ Thanks to the introduction of modern technology and the popularity of smart phones, humans often use this term in everyday conversation The word was first used in 1969 (Collins Dictionary) 2 In a bigger picture, this study follows the interpretivism research paradigm, or in other words, the job of the researcher is to explain what has already existed in real life The researcher applies the aforementioned assumptions in thesis as follows First and foremost, the four words over, above, under, below are treated as polysemous words with a prototypical meaning and other extended ones (spatial and non-spatial meanings) The non-spatial meanings are spatially grounded and those meanings should be explained by virtue of human cognitive processes associated with categorization The distinction between two synonymous pairs over-above, under- below reflects what people perceive from the world out there Additionally, as the dissertation is concerned about the transference from spatial meanings to non- spatial ones, the assumptions of constructivism and functionalism in psycholinguistics also influence the development of thought and world view via language use In reference to anthropology and neuroscience, the analysis of English metaphorical and metonymic extensions of word meaning is also assumed to demonstrate the unique cultural aspects of English-speaking countries.
Key research methods and techniques
The study is mixed methods research and it seeks for the overall mechanisms of meaning transference of over, above, under, below The following main research methods and techniques would be exploited: content-based analysis methods, context analysis methods, corpus and classifying techniques Firstly, content-based and context analysis methods are used to analyze the meanings denoted by over,
2 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/software
6 above, under, below in each instance of use Particularly, the contexts of use were paid much attention to find out the speaker‘s meaning under each utterance in which the four words are vehicles The content-based analysis method fundamentally serves as a basis for the researcher to describe, analyze and generalize meanings denoted by the four words
In order to collect data, corpus and classifying techniques are used The data for the discussion was taken from the corpus of 2017 COCA, genre: Fiction The corpus for the study contains 3,940,337 words 3 , and the corpus was randomly selected The writer registered an account in the official website of COCA and then followed the instructions given to download the data needed The data were collected thanks to the software Antconc (version 3.5.7) developed by Anthony, 2017.
The structure of the study
This thesis is divided into eight chapter
Chapter One introduces the research rationale, aims, objectives, scope and an overview of research methods, and research structure
Chapter Two includes the operating concepts for the study, and provides a literature review of previous approaches to the meaning transference of the four words ―over, above, under, below‖
Chapter Three provides a combination of frameworks by Deane (2005) and Kửvecses (2020) to analyze the meanings of the four words and how those spatial meanings are transferred
Chapters Four, Five, Six, and Seven systematically present the spatial and non- spatial meanings of the four words and then explain the detailed mechanisms of their meaning transference
Chapter Eight presents the conclusion of the study, together with the limitations, and recommendations of the further research
3 https://www.wordfrequency.info/coca.asp
THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS AND A LITERATURE
Introduction
This chapter focuses on two related tasks It first presents and justifies the operational concepts/ notions namely frames, domains, the prototype theory in respect to meaning transference; spatial scenes and corresponding construal; and meaning transference of spatial and non-spatial markers: cognitive processes and construal operations underlying this transition Then, it introduces the literature review of previous approaches to the meaning transference of the four words, from which the conceptual framework was built in the third chapter.
Dictionary meaning and the proposed view of meaning
English language learners/ users can easily find how the four words over, above, under, below are used in a variety of dictionaries One of which is Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learners (10 th edition) In this dictionary, the meanings of the four words are presented systematically in numbered lexical entries Particularly, over has 17 meanings as a preposition, 10 meanings as an adverb Above has 6 meanings as a preposition, 3 meanings as an adverb Under has 8 meanings as a preposition, 3 meanings as an adverb Below has 3 meanings as a preposition, 3 meanings as an adverb (See Appendix 1 for details) Generally, this way of presenting the spatial and non-spatial meanings of over, above, under, below is called the dictionary view of meaning, according to which the meanings of a word are categorized in terms of its usages It is supposed that this way of presenting the four words‘ meaning does not matter at all; however, the way how spatial meanings of over, above, under, below transfer to non-spatial ones are not shown According to the dictionary, all meanings of the four words are first spatial in nature, implying that over, above, under, below are originally prepositions Furthermore, it is also seen that non-spatial meanings/ usages of the four words are
8 often presented under the heading of adverbs, or to some grammarians, the four words can be particles succeeding a verb Therefore, the dictionary view of meaning cannot elaborate the meaning transference of the four words However, the dictionary view of meaning serves as a reference for the researcher‘s discussion Particularly, in this study, his discussion is first based on the prepositional meanings of over, above, under, below to then account for their meaning transference via their non-spatial usages
The researcher supposes that in order to understand the meanings of the four words, it is of great significance to put them into frames associated with their contexts of use Taking the sentence (3) ―Expel him: The British Ambassador in hot water over joke‖ as an example, it is seen that the context guides the meaning of over as
―because of‖ since the frame of the whole sentence is the CRITICIZING FRAME in which the Ambassador is severely criticized due to his joke about the son of a rubbish collector 4 The meaning of over in this case is not spatial at all Tyler &
Evans (2003) propose the meaning of over is online constructed as a result of contextual information From this perspective, Evans & Green (2006:221) suppose fully-specified pre-assembled word meanings do not exist, but are selected and formed from encyclopedic knowledge, called purport (Cruse, 2000) or meaning potential (Allwood, 2003) In a bigger picture, our proposed view of meaning is in consonance with the theory of Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1982), according to which a frame-based model is the key to construe words‘ meanings
The dictionary view of meaning or other traditional approaches is not adopted in this study because of their inappropriateness in construing the meanings of a word
In traditional approaches to linguistic semantics, words are assumed to denote, or symbolize concepts, a unit of word meaning (Croft & Cruse, 2004:7) Structural semantics advocates the comparison of words, breaking them into semantic features Truth-conditional semanticists propose meaning is derived from the fact that language refers directly to the world (Tyler & Evans, 2003:18) However, there
4 See details at: http://dev.kataeb.org/news/2015/05/14/expel-him-british-ambassador-in-hot-water-over-joke
9 are issues related to the aforementioned approaches First and foremost, when concepts of a word are divided into semantic features, human understanding must be bounded within such features Fillmore (1982:126) notes human cognition is far beyond such boundaries One example is the construal of boy/ girl, which differs from one to one Additionally, truth-conditional semantics does not describe meaning in natural contexts or compare meanings across languages and cultures, it only seeks for mathematical calculus and focuses on the logical properties of sentences such as entailments, contradictions, or logical equivalence (Wierzbicka, 1996:8) This is an example:
(4) He keeps the boy under the roof
The meaning of the phrase ―under the roof‖ is beyond purely spatial because there is an ambiguity of meaning If (4) is uttered in a situation which simply describes the location of where the boy is kept, the sentence is automatically spatial in nature However, if the sentence (4) is made in a situation which describes the shelter the man gives the boy, i.e., the protection that the boy receives, the construal of under is spatial and metaphorical because it denotes a conceptual metaphor discussed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) ―PROTECTION IS COVER/ SHELTER‖
A frame is a schematization of experience which is represented at the conceptual level and held in long-term memory of humans (Evans & Green, 2006:222) A frame can be analyzed in terms of figures and grounds from Gestalt psychology In this study, the frame helps to determine the word classes of over, above, under, below in their contexts of use One example is the utterance: ―Jump over and escape” (Brenda, 2014:69) To some grammarians, over is an adverb while to others, it is a preposition without a complement because the full form can be ―Jump over the wall and escape‖ Were this utterance in a frame of ESCAPING, the following remarks would be deduced First and foremost, the perspective of the speaker can either be inside (with the listener) or outside What can separate the speaker and listener is the material obstacle The action of jumping is modified thanks to the emergence of over, making the path of the action clear: (to) jump over,
10 not (to) jump up or (to) jump down In this case, the researcher supposes that over is an adverb 5 complementing the verb
In the following section, different word classes of over, above, under, below and the scope of analysis in this study are presented.
Word classes of over, above, under, below
As discussed earlier, the main goal is to explore the meaning transference of over, above, under, below, and it is time to delimit the parts of speech of the four words within the study Preposition is a derived word consisting of two elements: the prefix ―pre‖ (meaning before) and the base ―position‖ A preposition and a succeeding noun phrase constitute what is called a prepositional phrase Liles
(1987:229) defines preposition ―a closed-class, uninflectable morpheme which shows the relationship between its [noun phrase] object and another word in the sentence‖ Formally, there exists a class of word called particle, an integral part of verb-particle constructions (Liles, 1987:16) Here are two examples:
(6) a But when a small jet disappears over a big jungle, in the middle of the… b Think over the problem!
In these examples, the noun phrases after over are: a big jungle and the problem respectively Additionally, it can be reasoned from traditional grammatical definitions that the over in 6(b) is a particle Verb-particle and prepositional-phrase constructions have been assigned an even more dazzling variety of names, including: phrasal verb, poly-verb, compound verb, two-word verb, group verb, discontinuous verb, prepositional phrase, prepositional verb, conjunct, adjunct, disjunct, adverbial phrase (O'Dowd, 1998:4)
In this dissertation, the four words as prepositions, particles, and adverbs are treated because their meaning transference processes occur within such word classes When over, above, under, below are adjectives and prefixes, their meanings are purely schematic It is supposed that a formal syntactic structure of over, above, under,
5 Oxford English Dictionary (2 nd edition, 1989) cites the use of over in this sentence under the heading
11 below could not help to exactly determine their word classes because the word classes should be drawn out from their functional information.
Prototype theory in respect to meaning transference
Section 2.2 in this chapter has presented the proposed view of meaning, according to which the meanings of over, above, under, below have to be understood in a frame, and their meaning transference is accounted when they are prepositions, adverbs, and particles Another related theoretical construct is the Prototype theory developed by Rosch (1975) The first relation is the first principle of the formation of categories in the human mind namely perceived world structure which states that people rely on the correlational structure conceptualized from the world to form and organize structures The second relation is the second principle of the theory termed the principle of economy, according to which construers tend to base on the least information or structures gained to group similar stimuli into categories basing their salience or cue validity (Rosch, 2002)
A further concern is the significance of the prototype theory for the meaning transference of the four words It is proposed that the commitment that non-spatial meanings are spatially grounded is equivalent to the principle of perceived world structure To be specific, it is the correlation experience of humans with the world that serves as the basis for further discussion related to the usages of conceptual metaphors associated with over, above, under, below Additionally, organizing meanings from SPACE domain 6 (one category) to non-space domains (another category) is the matter of human categorization system in terms of both vertical and horizontal dimensions which impose constrains upon the inclusiveness and distinctiveness of meanings denoted by over, above, under, below The second principle serves as a method for us to analyze the syntactic structure of an utterance (textual information) with our background knowledge in a certain frame/ domain, from which similar attributes of over, above, under, below can be categorized
In this study, the meanings of over, above, under, below present complex categories
6 Nominal lexemes denote domains are capitalized
12 which are termed radial categories In the prototype theory, a radial category is structured surrounding a composite prototype, and each member of the category is related to the prototype by ―convention‖ Hence, word meanings comprise complex structured categories of meanings, or meanings (Evans & Green, 2006:328)
Particularly, meanings refer to all the meanings of a word while (a) sense refers to the meaning in an instance of use.
Spatial scenes and corresponding construal
As earlier mentioned, the four words over, above, under, below are first prepositions and they, in Talmy‘s sense, structure space In this section, the work by Talmy (2000) is presented, following is the discussion of how the theoretical backgrounds contribute to solve the issue raised in the introductory section When dividing space into elements, Talmy (2000) supposes that there are two main subsystems exhibited in human conceptualization of spatial structure The first one contains all schematic delineations which can be conceptualized as a framework that contains and localizes entities Associated concepts are region, location (static); path, and placement (dynamic) The second subsystem bears configurations and interrelationships of materials in the first system It is thought of like contents of space which make up an object or a mass
2.5.1 Primary breakup of a spatial scene
Two subsystems of the human conceptualization of space bear relationships represented via the use of prepositions Talmy supposes that when viewers use a preposition to describe what is being seen, they are actually schematizing the scene by selecting the salient aspects while ignoring the others In the scene, one object is treated as a primary one while the other(s) is a secondary one, both of which are termed ―the figure‖ 7 , or ―the trajector‖ and ―the ground‖, or ―landmark‖ Here are the characteristics of the objects in a spatial scene (Talmy, 2000:183):
7 Hereafter, the researcher terms them trajector (TR) and landmark (LM)
TABLE 1: Characteristics of the TR and LM (Talmy, 2000:183)
Has unknown spatial to be determined;
Geometrically simpler (often pointlike) in its treatment
More recently on the scene
Acts as a referent entity; having known properties that can characterize the primary object‘s unknowns
Geometrically complex in its treatment
Earlier on the scene/ in memory
More background, once primary object is perceived
More independent The reference frames, which can be the natural borders and axes, for example sides of a room, a piece of paper, the land and the sky, the horizontal and vertical lines or planes, serve as the limitations of the scene Talmy also notes that human body (especially one‘s own) and the Earth are also natural LMs, and the schematization of close-class elements are topological, regardless the size, shape, etc Here are several examples:
(6) … she had to put her hand over her microphone…
(7) I found myself about fifty feet or more above the ground
(9) They were below the moonstone hall…
In sentence (6), the TR is the woman‟s hand while the LM is her phone which is conceptualized lower than the TR in a certain plane Sentence (7) depicts a scene in which the speaker (TR) is exactly ―fifty feet or more‖ higher than the ground (LM), and the specific part of the speaker‘s body is perhaps his or her feet The spatial
14 scenes encoded in sentence (8) and (9) are also static and the TR is lower than the
The above discussion only covers the static relations between the TR and LM As viewers, humans also find that the objects involved in a spatial scene move towards each other In other words, a spatial scene contains motions of its objects Although motion is continuous, people tend to conceive it hierarchically Like TRs, motion can be schematized at various levels of specificity in which the simplest way is the path of an entire TR Like LM, paths are perceived in terms of frames of reference and distorted towards them In perceiving the paths, horizontal and vertical coordinates serve as a reference frame
(10) … her father leaned over and hugged her tightly…
(11) Ronko spreads his arms above the countertop in front of him…
(12) Shove your key under the door when you go
(13) Jordan swept his hand below the ball and flipped it back toward Bryan
Sentences (10) - (13) depict the dynamic spatial scenes in which the path of the TR moves, making it higher or lower than the LM
This thesis exploits Talmy‘s work to describe the spatial relations encoded by the four words and apparently such dynamic paths will be taken into consideration Particularly, the spatial scenes encoded by over, under will be compared and contrasted with those associated with above, below respectively in order to distinguish the usages of the two synonymous pairs: over-above, under-below
Moreover, the researcher supposes that the TR-LM spatial configurations also denote spatial meanings which are ascribed nominal terms in respect to the visual and functional of the configurations.
The theory of domains
Another concept strongly associated with the meaning transference in the human mind is domain To be specific, in this study, the meaning transference of the four words over, above, under, below is conceptualized as a transfer from the SPACE domain to other domains
Langacker proposes that ―domains are necessarily cognitive entities; mental experiences, representational spaces, concepts, or conceptual complexes‖ (Langacker, 1987:147) Therefore, domains provide background information that lexical concepts/ notions can be used and construed An example is that those words body, head, legs activate the domain of HUMAN BODY In this aspect, a domain is similar to a frame However, there are several important bases to bear in mind Firstly, concepts can be organized by different frames/ domains In other words, Langacker‘s theory of domains and Fillmore‘s theory of Frame Semantics complement each other in a number of ways A word activates the frame in which it is a part, and the frame itself can emerge in a matrix of domains Take sentence (10)
“… her father leaned over and hugged her tightly…‖ as an example, it is seen that two verb phrases ―leaned over‖ and ―hugged her tightly‖ denote a course of action that the father is expressing his love to his daughter The boundaries of the two verb phrases constitute the frame of FATHERHOOD The domain, denoted by the sentence (10), is SPACE However, the frame of FATHERHOOD can be elaborated in other domains as well Additionally, the difference in basic and abstract domains lies in the notions of experiential grounding and embodiment Basic domains are built upon experiential grounding while abstract domains like LOVE, or MARRIAGE require the construal of both experiential grounding and embodiment, which facilitates that in order to account for meaning transference the two above mechanisms should be taken into consideration
2.6.1 Basic, image-schematic and abstract domains
Domains are organized in terms of a hierarchy of complexity (Evans & Green, 2006:232) An example is the organization of Knuckle – Hand – Arm – Body – Space, which indicates the decrease in the numbers of domains required in the construal process (see Figure 1) Langacker also notes that basic domains are pre- conceptual in nature with the following basis:
TABLE 2: Partial inventory of basic domains (Evans & Green, 2006:234)
Basic domain Pre-conceptual basis
SPACE Visual system; motion and position (proprioceptive) sensors in skin, muscles and joints; vestibular system (located in the auditory canal – detects motion and balance)
PRESSURE Pressure sensors in the skin, muscles and joints
PAIN Detection of tissue damage by nerves under the skin
FIGURE 1: Location of the lexical concept KNUCKLE in a hierarchy of domain complexity (Evans & Green, 2006:232)
There are three attributes of basic domains They first provide the least amount of complexity in a complexity hierarchy, where complexity relates to level of detail Additionally, basic domains are directly tied to pre-conceptual embodied
17 experience; and the third attributes is that they provide a range of conceptual potential in terms of which other concepts and domains can be understood (Evans & Green, 2006:234) The following table summarizes the differences between basic domains and image-schema:
TABLE 3: Distinctions between basic domains and image-schema (Evans & Green,
Occupies lowest position in the hierarchy of complexity, e.g.,
Need not occur in a wide range of domain matrices, e.g.,
Derived from subjective experience, e.g., TIME,
EMOTION, or sensory- perceptual experience, e.g.,
Need not occupy lowest position in the hierarchy of complexity, e.g., UP-DOWN, FRONT-
Occurs in the widest range of domain matrices, e.g., SCALE,
Derived from sensory-perceptual experience only, e.g., UP-
Besides what is presented, Langacker (1987) sets a number of characteristics to identify domains The first one is dimensionality which designates that some domains are perceived of with one or more dimension For example, TIME, PITCH or TEMPERATURE is one dimensional domain while SPACE is construed with two or three dimensions A special domain is COLOUR which can be conceptualized with respect to three dimensions (BRIGHTNESS, HUE, SATURATION) Abstract domains can sometime be organized with respect to a certain dimension or a set of dimensions An instance is cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3,
4, …) represent a domain order along a single dimension However, abstract domains like EMOTION cannot be organized in terms of dimensionality Another characteristic of domains is that they are either configurational or locational,
18 depending on whether a domain is calibrated with respect to a given domain For example, COLOUR is a locational domain because each color sensation occupies a distinct point in the HUE dimension However, SPACE is configurational (Evans & Green, 2006:236)
2.7 The transition from spatial to non-spatial meanings of spatial and non- spatial markers: Cognitive processes and construal operations underlying this transition
Croft & Cruse (2004) identify that the human construal processes would normally undergo the following procedure with one-to-one step:
TABLE 4: The human construal processes
Relationality (entity/ interconnection) The above procedure is in agreement with the notion of conceptual structuring system which is based upon a limited number of large-scale schematic systems introduced by Talmy (2000) There are four key schematic systems within the conceptual structuring systems: the Configurational system, the Perspectival system, the Attentional system, and the Force-dynamic system It is seen from Table
4 that humans would normally use their visual capacity or auditory capacity to select/ detect the salient aspects/ features of the scene(s) and then compare those aspects/ features in reference to their situatedness to create a whole picture (the gestalt representation) This process is also similar to schematization described by Talmy (2000), in which certain aspects are selected while others are neglected Turning to the construal of a spatial scene, construers first select the salient features of the scene and then their brains judge the spatial relations between the TR and LM
(Deane, 2005) As a result, they would select an appropriate preposition to describe the scene, or in other words, they have to choose the best candidate to denote the spatial relations between the two or even more involved elements Therefore, if a candidate is selected, it should best fit what is denoted
There are three main elements in the figure (see Figure 2) which is possibly part of a bathroom, i.e., the human, the sink, and the mirror If each element is compared and judged in relation with others, there would be at least six utterances 8 ; however, if one wishes to convey the relative positions of the human body parts (the legs, the hands, and the head) with the other two elements, there would be one hundred and twenty utterances It can be easily seen that the upper body part of the man is higher and in contact with the sink Additionally, the head of the man is against the wall mirror The mirror and the sink are perhaps furniture in a bathroom
FIGURE 2: Spatial relations between the boy, the sink, and the glass
The salient aspect is the higher position of the head and the back of the man in comparison with the sink, which can be represented by the following sentence:
(14) The boy leans over the sink, presses his head against the glass
It is believed that a very specific sentence like (14*) 9 sounds ―unreasonable‖ to English language speakers without any special purposes:
8 It is calculated based on factorial in mathematics
9 This kind of sentences is logical and reasonable in the frame of CRIME REPORT in which all details are investigated
(14*) The upper part of the boy‟s body leans over the sink, his head presses against the glass
The use of the boy in this case is a kind of metonymy, whole for part, and when we substitute over by other prepositions, the scene cannot be best described
In the following smaller sections, important concepts namely image-schema, conceptual schemas, mental spaces, and metaphor will be presented, serving as the basis for the conceptual framework in chapter 3 Three first concepts are related to prepositional meaning while the last one is of focal attention when over, above, under, below denote abstract concepts, or in other words, they are addressed non- spatial markers
2.7.1 Image-schema in respect to meaning transference
The notion of image-schema was developed by Johnson (1987) and Lakoff (1987), and the two authors also suppose that this kind of conceptual representations in human mind are arising from embodied experience The definition of image- schemas, proposed by Gibbs & Colston (1995:347), are ―experiential gestalts and they come from different sensorimotors of human beings‖ Evans & Green (2006:180-190) synthesize that image-schemas possess eight properties:
(i) Image schemas are pre-conceptual in origin;
(ii) An image schema can give rise to more specific concepts;
(iii) Image schemas derive from interaction with and observation of the world;
(iv) Image schemas are inherently meaningful;
(v) Image schemas are analogue representations;
(vi) Image schemas are not the same as mental images;
(vii) Image schemas are subject to transformations and;
(viii) Image schemas can occur in clusters
The following table offers the nature of image-schema due to their space grounding:
TABLE 5: List of image-schemas (Evans & Green, 2006:190)
Space Up-Down, Front-Back, Left-Right, Near-Far, Center-Periphery,
Contact, Straight, Verticality Containment Container, In-Out, Surface, Full-Empty, Content
Locomotion Momentum, Source-Path-Goal
Balance Axis balance, Twin-pan balance, Point balance, Equilibrium Force Compulsion, Blockage, Counterforce, Diversion, Removal of restraint, Enablement, Attraction, Resistance
Merging, Collection, Splitting, Iteration, Part-whole, Counter- mass, Link (age)
Existence Removal, Bounded space, Cycle, Object, Process
Previous approaches to the meaning transference of over, above, under, below
English prepositions were once neglected and linguists never seemed to take them seriously (Jackendoff, 1983) but prepositions turn out to be appealing in CL If only taking over into consideration, it is seen that insofar as fourteen authors have been trying to analyse over 10 from different perspectives, namely Brugman & Lakoff
10 Due to the limitation of length, in this part, only previous accounts of over are presented
(1988), Boers (1996), Deane (2005), Dewell (1994), Kreitzer (1997), Lakoff (1987), Tyler & Evans (2003), Van Der Gucht, et al (2007), Roussel (2013), Gilles & Thierry (2014), Brenda (2014), Mori (2019)
There are two approaches to account for the meanings of over: monosemic approach (Van Der Gucht et al., 2007; Gilles & Thierry, 2014) and polysemic approach (other authors) Though the polysemic approach to account for the meaning transference of the four words is adopted in this study, comments on the monosemic approach by Gills & Thierry are still given as follows:
Gilles & Thierry (2014) provide an instruction-based analysis of over within the corpus of British National Corpus Their work is built upon the monosemic approach set by Van Der Gucht et al (2007) with three significant remarks which oppose Tyler & Evans‘s view (Gilles & Thierry; 2014:14):
1 ‗the meaning of over is an instrumental meaning which can only be instantiated in combination with lexical meanings‘;
2 ‗the meaning of the linguistic context should not be projected into the meaning of the preposition‘
3 ‗the meaning of over should be conceived of as a ‗general‘ non-lexical meaning which only specifies a relation between slots that have to be filled by autosemantic words, e.g., Noun over Noun, Noun BE over, Verb over
Noun, etc.‘ (Van Der Gucht et al; 2007: 748)
In generally, Gilles & Thierry (2014) emphasize the role of context to give a definition of over and advocate a compositional gestalt framework to provide a revised range of meanings denoted by over In the study of Gilles & Thierry (2014), over is analysed as a preposition, an adverb, and a particle All fifteen meanings of over, introduced by Tyler & Evans (2003), were reanalysed and their nominal terms had been revised, for example, ―Temporal‖, ―Focus-of-attention‖ turned to be
―Scanning of an Interval‖ and ―Topic‖ respectively The links between the meanings are the schematic meanings of over
The monosemic approach to the semantics of English prepositions is criticized by
Tyler & Evans (2003: 37-61) Within the scope of our goal set in the first part of the thesis, we suppose that there exist issues with this approach To begin with, although the two authors mention the schematic meanings of over to account for its meaning transference, metaphors and metonymies have been ignored when non- spatial meanings of over are presented Additionally, as Gilles & Thierry show
“over convokes a bounded domain and evokes a movement of covering of the domain, its bounds included‖ (Gilles & Thierry, 2014:26), they have ignored the internal TR-LM configurations/ structures and image-schemas denoted by over as a preposition
Back to the polysemic approach to account for the meaning transference of over, above, under, below, we synthesize those three approaches are: (i) an image-schema transformational approach (Lakoff, 1987; Boers, 1996; Deane, 2005); (ii) multiple levels of schematization (Kreitzer, 1997); and (iii) metaphorical development due to inference based on usage (Tyler & Evans, 2003) All of them will be commented as follows:
Lakoff took over with twenty-two meanings as a case study in English prepositions
(Lakoff, 1987: 416-461) and his analysis is sometimes described as the full- specification approach to lexical semantics in later literature review (Tyler & Evans, 2001; Deane, 2005) The core point in the theory is that the meanings associated with prepositions like over, which are grounded in spatial experience, are structured in terms of image-schemas Lakoff supposes that an image schema combining elements of both ABOVE and ACROSS is the prototypical meaning of over The distinct meanings associated with over are structured with respect to this image-schema which provides the category with its prototype structure Furthermore, according to Lakoff, some of the connections among schemas can only be defined in imagistic terms Lakoff claims that the schemas which are different from the central schema are considered to represent distinct meanings associated with over According to this model of word meaning, the central schema for over has at least six distinct and closely related variants, each of which is stored in semantic memory
FIGURE 9: Central image schema (adopted from Lakoff, 1987:423)
Given the range of meanings that over is associated with in addition to the ABOVE- ACROSS meaning, this model results in a potentially vast proliferation of meanings for each lexical item
TABLE 7: Schemas proposed by Lakoff (1987) for over besides the central schema
Schema type Basic meaning Examples 11
ABOVE schema The TR is located above the
(a) 12 The helicopter is hovering over the hill (b) She has strange power over me
COVERING schema The TR is covering the LM (a) The board is over the hole
REFLEXIVE schema The TR is reflexive: the TR is simultaneously the TR and the
LM The final location of the TR is understood with respect to its starting position
(a) The fence fell over (b) He turns the question over in this mind
EXCESS schema When over is employed as a prefix it can indicate ‗excess‘ of
(a) The bath overflowed (b) You made over a hundred errors
Over is used as an adverb to indicate a process that is repeated
(b) After receiving a poor grade, the student started the assignment over (again)
11 Only sentences extracted from our corpus, and in separating positions are numbered
12 Example (a) shows spatial usage of over while example (b) shows non-spatial usage of over
13 Lakoff does not provide any non-spatial usage of over in this schema
14 This sense is non-spatial
The following figure presents how schemas of over are linked:
FIGURE 10: Links among schemas of over (Lakoff, 1987:436)
According to Lakoff, metaphors take image-schemas as their input; and hence, the emergence of the metaphorical use of over in the sentence ―She has a strange power over me” is explained as ―an instance of a very common metaphor: CONTROL IS UP; LACK OF CONTROL IS DOWN” (cf Lakoff & Johnson: 1980:15)
Critique of Lakoffian Full Specification Approach
There are three problems with Lakoffian approach The first issue is the incorrect prototypical meaning of over: a combination of ABOVE and ACROSS schema To begin with, it is seen that when over means across, it is collocated with motion verbs, making it function as a particle or an adverb rather than a preposition This is opposite the first usage of over as suggested by Etymology dictionary 15 or other
15 https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=over
36 dictionaries (cf Tyler & Evans, 2003:48) An incorrect choice of the prototypical meaning would entail a vagueness in explaining how a new meaning emerges This is an example:
(25) a The bird flew over the wall b Sam climbed over the wall
In view of the Lakoffian principle, the meanings of over in 25(a) and (b) are distinct due to the interpretation that over in 25(b) is involved with contact while over in
25(a) is not The syntax of the two instances is the same while the difference lies in two motion verbs ―fly‖ and ―climb‖ Apparently, human knowledge about birds (they can fly) and people (they cannot), provides readers with the inference that birds do not come into contact with walls when crossing over them while people do
In other words, the linguistic context together with encyclopedic knowledge provides the details relating to the presence or absence of contact In this case, over only denotes schematic meaning, not lexical meaning Therefore, a deduction that over carries a new meaning is inappropriate It is this failure, i.e., distinction between polysemy and vagueness, that does not provide the accurate functional information of spatial over The researcher supposes that the meanings of over in both instances are variants of the prototypical meaning 16 The second issue is a lack of methodological constraints In other words, Lakoff provides no principled criteria for determining what counts as a distinct meaning This means that the polysemy account presented for over (or whatever lexical item we might apply the approach to) results purely from the intuitions (and perhaps also the imagination) of the analyst rather than actually representing the way a particular category is represented in the mind of the language users (Tyler & Evans, 2003) The analysis is rather simple or there is no advance over the purely descriptive account (Deane, 2005) Therefore, it is necessary to find both the visual and functional information of the spatial markers first before it is possible to explore how their meanings transfer The last issue involves a lack of methodologies for a space of thought As earlier
16 We follow Deane‘s idea about the prototypical meaning of over, presented in the next section
37 mentioned, an image is different if being looked from different vantage points Deane (2005) then proves that the Covering meaning of over termed by both Lakoff
(1987) and Tyler & Evans (2003) is in fact a variant of the prototypical meaning
In general, in respect to the objective of our study, Lakoffian approach does not provide the constraints to account for distinct spatial meanings of over and the strong links between them, serving as a solid foundation to discuss how non-spatial meanings of over are transferred
2.8.1.2 Boers‟ image-schema transformational approach
Summary
The researcher has so far analyzed three approaches to the meaning transference of English prepositions in which over is treated as a focus Concerning the issue raised in this dissertation, works by Lakoff (1987), Boers (1996), Kreitzer (1997), Tyler & Evans (2003), and Deane (2005) were commented The gap explored is that no
52 previous approaches show the strong links between spatial meanings of the four words and their prototypical meanings, elaborate the multi-stage procedure with different level of metaphorical activation denoting non-spatial meanings of over, above, under, below It is shown that a multimodal approach to the meaning transference of the four words “over, above, under, below” is appropriate in reference to linguistics and neuroscience Particularly, Deane‘s MIT seems to be effective to solve the issue Firstly, the framework provides a rigorous theory to treat the meaning transference of spatial over from the prototypical meaning to other extended ones Additionally, it minimally reduces the meaning redundancy, or polysemy fallacy, showing that human construal associated with English prepositions is based upon image complexes including three modalities of thought Last but not least, the framework also facilitates the mappings from spatial to non- spatial meanings though they need further systematic analysis as suggested when comments on Boers‘ work were made The next chapter will present the conceptual framework and analyze the data collected to shed light on the issue raised in the introduction
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This chapter presents the conceptual framework, the collected data for the study, and especially it shows how the data were analyzed to answer the two research questions:
1 What are spatial and non-spatial meanings of over, above, under, below in their contexts of use?
2 How do the meanings of over, above, under, below transfer from the spatial to non-spatial meanings in their contexts of use?
As will be shown, the proposed framework, a combination of Deane‘s MIT and Kửvecses‘s Extended CMT, was exploited to treat the meaning transference of the four words ―over, above, under, below‖ with the corpus of 2017 COCA, genre: fiction.
A multimodal approach to the meaning transference of over, above, under,
In this study, the spatial meanings of over, above, under, below were analyzed to serve as a basis for the discussion of how the spatial meanings of the four words transfer to the non-spatial meanings Therefore, the first task is to identify distinct meanings of the four words In respect to the previous literature review, the researcher decided to exploit the Multimodal Image Theory by Deane (2005) to account for the meanings of the four words in the SPACE domain Regarding the non-spatial usages of the four words, the Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory
(Kửvecses; 2017, 2020) was chosen All in all, the framework is a hybrid one consisting of four spaces (Visual space, Maneuver space, Kinetic space, and Mental space) in which the prototypical meaning has different variants The following sections justify the proposed framework and then explain how the data collected were treated in order to answer the two research questions
3.2.1 Multimodal Image Theory to over, above, under, below as spatial markers
Three frames of Deane‘s multimodal spatial representations are: Visual space
(spatial relations as image-complexes); Kinetic space (in reference to action and force dynamics); and Maneuver space (in reference to Orientation and Alignment) (i) Visual space images treat spatial relationships in reference to occlusion, visual separation, angle of gaze In fact, the space presupposes a visual frame of reference that calculates the position to the line of gaze Particularly, the Visual space takes the following elements into consideration:
Properties of the field: gaze coordinates, depth coordinates, viewpoint orientation, field center, and resolution
Properties of figures in the field: dimensionality, boundedness, and contours
Relation of figure to the field: position and orientation
Relations among figures in an image: overlap, the relative orientation in gaze coordinates
Transformational relations among images: viewpoint shifts, focus shifts
In the Visual space, construers would follow three rules to judge a spatial scene: Preference Rule Principle, Stereoscopic Principle and Distinctiveness Principle
In view of the UP and DOWN image-schemas associated with the four words over, above, under, below, it is proposed that the following calculations: three gazes
(direct horizontal, upwards, and downwards); two types of resolution (high resolution, low resolution); the LM as the center of the field In terms of occlusion, the TR and LM, to certain extent, will partially or totally occlude each other due to the size, shape, and viewpoint All elements were taken into consideration to provide image-complexes, basing on which distinct visual and functional information of the four words were found Furthermore, Deane (2005) does not provide the principle(s) for deciding what makes a prototype in the modality; therefore, the researcher supposes that the prototypical complex of images must denote the prototypical meaning It is of great significance to identify the characteristics of the prototypical meaning Tyler & Evans (2003) suppose that the prototypical
55 meaning has four characteristics: (i) earliest attested meaning; (ii) predominance in the semantic network; (iii) relations to other prepositions; and (iv) ease of predicting meaning transferences To the best of our knowledge, a prototypical complex of images should: (i) denote the earliest attested meaning (found in the Etymology Dictionary); and (ii) has relations to other image complexes which facilitate a different meaning (ii) Maneuver space images presuppose an object-centered frame of reference involving the movement of TR and LM such as the clearance between them, the effects of moving or rotating the TR and LM towards each other
This space is in fact an allocentric frame to complement to the Visual space to reaffirm the distinctiveness of the visual and functional information of the four words over, above, under, below
(iii) Kinetic space images calculate the force-dynamic interaction (Talmy, 2000) such as the conceptual paths which define direction (and potential) for movement, agonist and antagonist force Kinetic space images presuppose a dynamic frame of reference treating the spatial scenes from different dimensions, taking into account the orientation and potential movement of the speaker or a viewpoint character (Deane, 2005) In respect to the UP and DOWN image-schemas associated with over, above, under, below, we calculated the movement of the TR from its initial position to its final position in the scene which also takes the LM as the center According to Deane (2005:46), three spaces share what is termed ―Cross modal Correspondences‖ The first one is automatic perceptually-motivated correspondences For example, a visual space gap obviously corresponds to clearance in maneuver space Similarly, engagement in kinetic space corresponds to contact in maneuver space (though not in visual space, where apparent contact may be an effect of insufficient resolution.) Second, there may be prototypical, or default correspondences For example, the direction of movement prototypically corresponds to the direction of gaze Finally, there may be other, more local correspondences which depend on the particular concept being modeled Perceptually necessary correspondences will be indicated by brackets, e.g.: [gap
2] Default or prototype correspondences will be indicated by parentheses, e.g.: (ground
2) Finally, correspondences which form part of the definition of a specific concept will be presented without parentheses or brackets Deane also proposes that the analysis must follow two principles ―Egocentric Alignment Principle‖ and ―Cross modal Equivalence Principle‖
Concerning the aim to explore the distinct spatial meanings of the four words over, above, under, below, the researcher only took into account their distinct pairs of image complexes in three spaces All image-complexes of the three modalities serve as a ground for further discussion of metaphorical uses of over, above, under, below
3.2.2 Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory to metaphorical uses of the four words
The fourth space in this hybrid framework is the Mental space which contains non- spatial meanings of over, above, under, below As mentioned earlier, non-spatial meanings are associated with metaphors; therefore, the researcher has to explain the activation of all metaphors associated with each non-spatial meaning of the four words in their contexts of use It is important to bear in mind that there is no single metaphor or metonymy associated with all the non-spatial meanings of the four words; hence, there is no single image-schema associated with all those meanings Additionally, one non-spatial meaning is possibly associated with a number of metaphors in other non-space domains In view of the comments and analyses of the previous approaches to the meaning transference of over, above, under, below, the researcher came to the conclusion that the model advocated by Kửvecses (2020) would be exploited as the conceptual framework to treat each metaphor associated with non-spatial meanings of the four words in this research study The link is a continuum from mental spaces to frames, domains and finally the image-schemas This signifies that the use of over, above, under, below within the chosen corpus would be analyzed in this way A metaphor that is used in a specific communicative situation as part of a mental space, or scene, will activate the frame structure to
57 which it is linked, which will, in turn, activate the domain of which the frame is a part, and the activation will reach the image schema that conceptually supports the frame This model is consonant with a number of others in the cognitive linguistic study of metaphor, such as Lakoff‘s ―invariance principle‖ (1991) and Ruiz de Mendoza‘s ―extended invariance principle‖ (1998) The following figure illustrates the analysis process The broken vertical lines indicate activation:
FIGURE 17: Metaphorical activation from mental spaces to frames, domains, and image schemas (adapted from Kửvecses, 2020)
The relationship between image schemas, domains, frames, and spaces helps construers to understand the general issue of how schematicity (cf Langacker,
1987) plays a role in metaphorical conceptualization Domains may assume more abstract conceptual structures that are known as image schemas For example,
JOURNEY assumes the more schematic structure of MOTION and, more specifically,
SOURCE-PATH-GOAL MOTION (to distinguish it from other types of motion) Some domains may take several image schemas to support them conceptually For example, the BODY domain is based on the image schemas of CONTAINER,
VERTICALITY, STRUCTURED OBJECT,and so on; or in other words, abstract domains exploit image-schemas in basic domains like SPACE to denote their TR-LM configurations Additionally, domains may also share several image schemas regardless of whether they are abstract or basic ones For instance, the BUILDING domain (in the sense of an enclosed construction), like the BODY domain, is also based on the CONTAINER, VERTICALITY,and STRUCTURED OBJECT schemas Sullivan (2013: 22) defines cognitive domains as ―the cognitive structure comprising all schematic information potentially available for mapping via a given metaphor.‖
Furthermore, she suggests that domains consist of frames (Fillmore, 1982) Frames involve more specific and conceptually richer information than domains For example, the BODY domain includes several distinct frames, such as PERCEPTION,
INGESTION,and EXERCISING.These frames account for such metaphorical linguistic expressions as I see what you mean (PERCEPTION), digest an idea (INGESTION), and a mental exercise (EXERCISING) (Sullivan, 2013) Together, they make up what is known as the generic-level metaphor THE MIND IS THE BODY (see Johnson, 1987; Sweetser, 1990) The frames in a domain consist of roles and relations between the roles which can be filled by values When the roles are filled by particular values in actual discourse in specific communicative situations, it comes to mental spaces
Data and data processing
This dissertation addresses the meaning transference of the four words over, above, under, below in reference to corpus linguistics; in other words, the data containing over, above, under, below should be extracted from a particular text corpus There are seventeen text corpora in which British National Corpus, Brown Corpus,
17 Longman Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, all of which are in the online versions
Contemporary American English Corpus, and Oxford English Corpus are the most widely used There are three main reasons why COCA is chosen to be the data in this paper Firstly, COCA is currently the largest corpora in linguistics with more than 560 million words of text in five genres: spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers and academic texts Only in the year of 2017, more than 20 million words had been added Hence, in reference to the thesis of usage-based model, COCA is appropriate More importantly, the corpus shows its unique features with chart listings and collocates searching of up to ten words right or left the node word; re-sortable concordances and comparisons between genres and time periods (Davies, 2010) This makes it easier for linguists to categorize the collocates and structures associated with each word Last but not least, COCA has never been exploited to treat the four prepositions so far As the goal of the paper was to investigate the meaning transference, the genre of fiction was chosen In order to extract the needed data, the researcher made use of the software AntConc (64-bit, version 3.5.7) and then found the concordance of each preposition in the corpus The data were then cleaned as many sentences were totally repeated, all idiomatic expressions, adjectival usages of the four were excluded The researcher only kept sentences containing the four words as prepositions, adverbs, and particles The total instances of the four words are shown in table 12
TABLE 13: The information of data collected
Spatial instances Non-spatial instances
The data were processed under the following procedure:
Stage 1: Identifying a metaphorical and non-metaphorical usage
This stage concerns the classification of instances in which over, above, under,
63 below are metaphorically used The identification process is termed ―Metaphorical
Identification Procedure 18 ‖ introduced by Pragglejaz Group (2007) Additionally, the researcher also labelled the instances when the scene is spatial or non-spatial Finally, all instances are classified into three groups: (i) spatial and non- metaphorical, (ii) spatial and metaphorical; (iii) non-spatial and metaphorical The researcher applied MIP as follows (adapted from Pragglejaz Group, 2007:3):
TABLE 14: Metaphorical Identification Procedure (adapted from Pragglejaz
Step 1 Read the entire sentence or sentences to establish a general understanding of the meaning Separating the TR and LM in the sentence
Step 2 Determine the lexical units in the sentence(s)
Step 3 (a) For each lexical unit in the text, establish its meaning in context, that is, how it applies to an entity, relation, or attribute in the situation evoked by the text (contextual meaning) Take into account what comes before and after the lexical unit The foci are the use of the four words
(b) For each lexical unit, determine if it has a more basic contemporary meaning in other contexts than the one in the given context For our purposes, basic meanings tend to be:
More concrete; what they evoke is easier to imagine, see, hear, feel, smell, and taste
More precise (as opposed to vague)
Basic meanings are not necessarily the most frequent meanings of the lexical unit Basic meanings are typically the prototypical meanings (c) If the lexical unit has a more basic current–contemporary meaning in other contexts than the given context, decide whether the contextual meaning contrasts with the basic meaning but can be understood in comparison with it
Step 4 If yes, mark the lexical unit as metaphorical If no, mark the lexical unit as non-metaphorical
Stage 2: All spatial usages of over, above, under, below were analyzed in the light of MIT and metaphorical usages of the four words were analyzed in respect to Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory We put each of them into one of the following groups: spatial configurations (static or dynamic) and non-spatial configurations The visual and functional information of over, above, under, below in such group are categorized, basing on which we nominally termed the meanings
Stage 3: The image-schemas of over, above, under, below from MIT and Extended
CMT were compared to show the metaphors emerged from each of the three spatial spaces of the four words, basing on which the mappings from DOMAIN space to other domains were found
The following sentential analyses are used as an illustration for the above procedure:
(28) "No, I hang it, I'll come over myself.”
Sentence (28) was analyzed as follows:
Stage 1: Identifying a metaphorical and non-metaphorical usage
Step 1 The sentence denotes a potential action of the speaker who decides to come and visit a particular place The TR is ―he‖ and the LM refers to a path configuration
Step 2 /No/ /I/ /hang/ /it/ /I‘ll/ /come/ /over/ /myself/
/No/ meaning in context: used to deny the commitment of the other people basic meaning 19 : used to give a negative reply or statement meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast
/I/ meaning in context: first person, the speaker basic meaning: used as the subject of a verb when the speaker or writer is referring to himself/herself meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast
19 The meanings are extracted from Oxford Dictionary Online
/hang/ meaning in context: an action of putting a notice board “Get Junior” on the door basic meaning: to attach something, or to be attached, at the top so that the lower part is free or loose meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast Metaphorical usage: No
/it/ meaning in context: the notice board basic meaning: the 3 rd person, the addressee meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast Metaphorical usage: No
/I‘ll/ = /I will/ meaning in context: to denote an action of the time speaking by the speaker basic meaning: to denote an action of the time speaking meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast Metaphorical usage: No
/come/ meaning in context: to move to the listener basic meaning: to move to a person/ place meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast Metaphorical usage: No
/over/ meaning in context: to complement the verb “come” to show the direction of the verb “come” basic meaning: to show something is higher than something/ somebody meaning in context and basic meaning: shows the transformation of the meaning
/myself/ meaning in context: refer to the speaker basic meaning: used when the speaker or writer is also the person affected by an action meaning in context and basic meaning: does not show any contrast
All in all, it is possible to conclude that the sentence (28) is spatial and metaphorical
Stage 2: MIT and Extended CMT to sentence (28)
Summary
This section has presented the hybrid conceptual framework, a combination of MIT (Deane, 2005) and Extended CMT (Kửvecses, 2020) to account for the meaning transference of the four words over, above, under, below within their contexts of use The procedure to account for the usages of the four words are clear The first stage is to identify the metaphorical or non-metaphorical usages of over, above, under, below (MIP stage) Then at the second stage, the corresponding construal would undergo either MIT or Extended CMT, or both, serving as a basis for us to compare the image-schema transformations in stage 3 All the results collected after a three-stage procedure were synthesized and categorized to provide the way that the meanings of over, above, under, below transfer from spatial to non-spatial ones in their contexts of use
MEANINGS OF UNDER AND ITS TRANSFERENCE FROM
Introduction
The findings and discussion get started by the analysis of under The reason for this selection is simple: the analysis of under is rather simple and short in comparison with that of over The researcher divides the chapter into two main sections, one of which is to present the spatial meanings and dynamic relations of TR and LM of under while the other is to present the non-spatial meanings of under and the mappings from SPACE domain to other domains, or in other words, the mechanisms for its meaning transference As will be shown, the mechanisms of meaning transference of under are its mappings in which certain silent aspects of the TR-LM spatial configurations are remained.
Under as a spatial marker
In the corpus of the thesis, 197 instances of under are spatial; i.e., 78 cases denoting the prototypical meaning, 24 cases denoting the first variant of the prototypical meaning related to occlusion, and 95 cases denoting forces
4.2.1 The Visual space images of under
The following sentence denotes a static scene in which under is a vehicle:
(30) One evening we sat outdoors under an awning at an Indian restaurant…
Although the scene depicts a group of people who are sitting and perhaps chatting, the scene is static and spatial in general because of the relative position between
―we‖ and ―an awning at an Indian restaurant‖ This is also in agreement with the topological characteristics in linguistics Applying the four-stage procedure to sentence (30), it is realized that the scene is first spatial and non-metaphorical, and it can be represented by the following figure:
FIGURE 19: Static interpretation of under in sentence (30)
The TR is we, which is located lower than the LM, an awning The sentence does not specify the distance from the TR to the LM; however, human background knowledge tells that the LM is of course much vertically higher than the TR even when the TR stands up right, and it provides a kind of shelter for the TR In terms of size, the LM is bigger than the TR even when the scene is construed in a low resolution Therefore, in respect to MIT, sentence (30) depicts a scene seen in a direct gaze, the resolution can either be high or low, but the gap between the TR and
Figure 19 offers a schematic image which also facilitates the construal that the TR can be situated in any lower position from any part of the LM providing the construer‘s situatedness helps to perceive the scene in such the way However, in many cases of our corpus, this does not guarantee that the LM is always bigger than the TR What is taken into consideration, or salient aspect, is the TR is vertically lower than the LM Here is an example:
(31) … the wooden wedges be placed under each of the tires…
If sentence (30) shows a lack of contact between the TR and LM regardless a high or low resolution, sentence (31) shows the opposite Therefore, a static spatial scene associated with under would be represented by either figure 19 or figure 20
FIGURE 20: Image-schema denoted by sentence (31)
A MIT approach to sentence (31) shows that the gaze is downwards while the resolution is apparently high, the contact between the TR and LM is visible Combining two figures and changing the gaze coordinates, the following figure is combined:
FIGURE 21: The visual space of under
Figure 21 (c) is a variant of figure 21 (a), being looked with a downward orientation In this case the TR can interact with the LM regardless the resolution Look at the following example:
(32) … she noticed a shoe sticking out from under a shelf
The scene construer does not need a close examination to judge whether the TR and
LM are in contact or not The salient aspect of the scene shows a part of the shoe is revealed out from under the shelf
Back to the etymology of under, the word is related to Sanskrit adhara, which
74 translates roughly to ‗lower‘ (cf Tyler & Evans, 2003: 123); therefore, we can see that the earliest meaning of under denotes a lower position of the TR in respect to the LM Combining this aspect with our analysis of under in the light of MIT, we suppose that the prototypical meaning of under is defined as image complexes as follow:
TABLE 16: The prototypical meaning of under
The prototypical meaning of under is defined by a pair of images: a From the side at high resolution: the TR is separated from the LM by a vertical gap b From the side at low resolution: the TR is separated from the LM by a potential vertical gap
The gap between TR and LM is not significant from the side at low resolution
So far, the researcher has discussed the prototypical meaning of under His analysis shows that the result is in agreement with what Tyler & Evans discussed (2003) The TR can interact with the LM or in other words, the TR is conceptualized within the inner space of the LM Having a look at the figure 21, it can also be found that the rotated schema of the prototypical meaning would entail an occlusion in viewing when the LM is big enough to cover certain parts of the TR Turning back to sentence (32), the LM covers parts of the TR, an that‘s why under is used If the
LM covers the whole TR and the speaker‘s vision is totally occluded, such an utterance cannot be made Here is another example:
(33) Her hair is hidden under a cap
Human background knowledge tells us that hair is treated a mass In this case, there are two potential understandings First, the cap (LM) covers all the hair of the woman (TR) The second construal is that most of the hair is covered by the LM If the first one is true, the speaker is aware of the existence of the hair; i.e., the woman is not bald totally and the cap must be big enough to hide all the hair The second one is always true in reference to human background knowledge that a cap is a covering tool protecting humans from sunlight or rain It is possible to conclude that
75 it is the noun succeeding under and the prototypical meaning of under that comprise what is termed ―Covering Meaning‖ The researcher supposes that the Covering meaning of under as discussed by Tyler & Evans is in fact the prototypical meaning of under in its Visual space with the same schema at different gaze which entails an occlusion
A further meaning discussed by Tyler & Evans is ―Non-existence‖ which is denoted in the following sentence:
(34) Typically, to prevent animals from disturbing the grave, the dead person is buried under six feet of dirt (Tyler & Evans, 2003:127)
In this sentence, the TR is the dead person while the LM is in fact the ground because six feet of dirt is exactly the distance from the surface of the ground to where the dead person is buried The LM totally occludes the TR, which is the salient aspect in the configuration This is in agreement with the notion of schematization discussed by Talmy (2000); i.e., the most significant relations are retained Here are other examples:
(35) Better than broken bones and being buried under a hearth
(36) …she could easily have been buried, contorted under the snow…
In both sentence (35) and (36), the use of under is associated with ―buried‖ and the succeeding nouns are conceptualized as LM with surface occluding the TR If six feet of dirt entails ―Non-existence‖, under the snow and under a hearth will entail so However, this conclusion risks misunderstanding as it is context-bound Let‘s look at the use of under in the following sentence:
(37) …buried her parents in the mossy family plot under the spruces and wych elms
Under is used with ―buried‖, but the succeeding noun in sentence (37) is conceptualized differently in comparison with that in previous sentences It (the spruces and wych elms) is seen merely as reference point, and the LM in this case does not occlude the TR Therefore, the deduction that Non-existence Meaning is a distinct meaning of under seems to be inappropriate because the meaning is merely
76 the result of context-bound analysis We again reaffirm our argument that Covering meaning, Non-existence meaning are variants of the prototypical meaning of under being looked with different gazes The following table summarizes the Visual space of under:
TABLE 17: The Visual space of under
The images represented in this space are locative and stationary, besides the prototypical meaning of under, there are two other pairs of images:
Non-spatial meanings and the meaning transference processes from spatial to non-spatial associated with under
to non-spatial associated with under
As mentioned earlier, under is exploited to express non-spatial meanings which entail a range of conceptual metaphors In the corpus of the study, 790 instances of under denote non-spatial meanings In reference to the meaning transference, it was found that 268 cases denoting Less meaning from the prototypical meaning, 394 cases denoting Control meaning from the Kinetic space, and 128 cases denoting non-spatial meaning(s) related to occlusion The following discussion will present those metaphors and discusses the mappings of those metaphors from SPACE domain to other domains
(1) MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN
This metaphor has its basis on the daily experience, according to which an increase/ decrease either horizontally or vertically is conceptualized as ―more or less‖ In the
81 case of vertical extension, it stands for growth in general: a case of metonymy in a broad meaning (part for whole) This metaphor impacts the use of under in the domain of TIME/ NUMBER Here are examples:
(49) It takes me under twenty-four hours to find a job
(50) The shot was a touch under two hundred yards and it was quiet along…
In the case of AGE (a subdomain of TIME), there is a requirement of ontological metaphor Here is an example:
(51) … and probably more than a few under age 18 as well, thanks to offshore betting sites…
The LM associated with this metaphor is merely seen as a reference point for the
TR to be compared with In reference to Tyler & Evans‘s analysis, the Less meaning is activated when this metaphor is ignited The following table presents the mapping from spatial to non-spatial of the meaning of under associated with the metaphor
TABLE 20: Mapping from spatial to non-spatial of under associated with “MORE
IS UP, LESS IS DOWN.”
SPACE domain Other domains (TIME, NUMBER, AGE) The TR is seen lowered than the LM in the direct, horizontal gaze viewpoint, regardless the high or low resolution
The TR is conceptualized ―lowered‖ than the TR in terms of numeric values
The construal does not consider the gaze, resolution
The TR and LM are concrete entities
The TR and LM are abstract entities
It is seen that in respect to our priorly set constraints, the visual information of under is retained; however, the functional information has changed to denote less numeric values Therefore, the meaning termed “Less” is advocated in this case
The TR-LM configuration is similar in both spatial and non-spatial cases, the motivation for meaning transference is mapping
(2) HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN
This metaphor has a close link with the first metaphor It is in fact a case of the first one; i.e., when the LM is a person or an institution Historically, when meeting a
82 person of higher ranks, people are expected to kneel down or bow to show their respect That is why people of lower class/ rank tend to be lower physically than those of higher class/ rank
One related metaphor is: SOCIAL HIERACHY IS A LADDER This metaphor is built upon the first one: MORE (STATUS) IS UP, LESS (STATUS) IS DOWN Again, when presenting the structure of an organization, a company, etc., name of people of higher positions will be on the top An example is:
(52) Her husband worked under Wu in Executive; she was a flow engineer…
(53) at the time of the consolidation of Solidar under Rex Regis…
In the above sentence, Rex Regis is the name of the ruler which is also used to stand for his period of power This is a case of metonymy The frame in both sentences
(52) and (53) can be SYSTEM in which entities are interrelated in a number of ways Particularly, in sentence (52), the LM directed the TR while in the sentence
(53) the LM exerted forces on a number of TRs during a period of time The domain is abstract: POWER It can be seen that above two metaphors show non-spatial and metaphorical meanings Two metaphors emerge from the Visual space of under
Graphically presented, the TR-LM configurations can be drawn in a direct gaze similarly to the figure (19) or (20)
In comparison with the visual and functional information of under associated with the first metaphor, it is realized that the information of under associated with the second metaphor is unchanged Therefore, the researcher does not advocate any distinct meaning of under associated with this metaphor The mappings of under associated with the metaphor can be presented in the following table:
TABLE 21: Mapping from spatial to non-spatial of under associated with “HIGH
STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN.”
SPACE domain Abstract domain: POWER
The TR is seen lowered than the LM in the direct, horizontal gaze viewpoint, regardless the high or low resolution
The TR is conceptualized ―lowered‖ than the TR in terms of power/ force
The construal does not consider the gaze, resolution
The TR and LM are concrete entities
The TR and LM are either concrete or abstract entities
(3) BEING SUBJECT TO FORCE OR POWER IS DOWN
In the previous part, it was presented that under is used when the TR is in contact with the LM, or to be exact, the LM can exert certain forces on the TR Look at the following sentences:
(54) tapes and reached for the door It locked under her hand
(55) farm's small remaining patch of grass crunched under Samuel's feet, chewed to its roots by…
(56) Is the adjutant suddenly under a lot of pressure to push through citations?
The image-schema presented in those sentences can be ideally represented via the following figure with the dashed arrow presenting forces:
FIGURE 24: Force from the LM to the TR associated with under
While sentences (54) and (55) denote spatial scenes, sentence (56) represents a non- spatial one However, the similarity of those sentences is that the TR is pressurized by the LM The third metaphor has its own physical basis, or exactly it is derived from the Kinetic space of the word This meaning is spatial and metaphorical at the same time The domain is still SPACE when the TR and LM are concrete However, when the LM and TR are abstract, the domain shifts to PRESSURE
When the LM elaboration refers to a linguistic action, we would have the metaphor:
(57) … while at the same time glowing under the light of his compliments
―Glowing‖ refers to a change of state which is caused by a verbal action in this case
In short, this metaphor denotes a non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
The above metaphor is closely related to the third metaphor ―BEING SUBJECT TO FORCE OR POWER IS DOWN‖ because both metaphors entail a force which the
LM exerts on the TR Some spatial and metaphorical examples are:
(58) part of the forest, with the pines crackling under the weight of snow…
(59) Graylark shifts under the weight of the box
(60) Kermit lay there, under that burden, his face as gray as the…
Other non-spatial and metaphorical examples are:
(61) her resolve didn't crumble under the weight of Violet's pleading brown eyes…
(62) … trying to help you guys get out from under such a burden
The researcher has shown that when the LM exerts forces on the TR and depending on the LM, so it is possible to deduce one of the three earlier mentioned conceptual metaphors To certain extent, the researcher agrees with Tyler & Evans‘s (2003) idea that when forces are exerted on the TR, humans conceptualize a kind of control that the LM has Back to the construal of ―HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS
IS DOWN.‖, it is seen that the TR can be influenced by the LM, or in a broader meaning, there exists forces
Taking the visual and functional information of under associated with three aforementioned metaphors, it is supposed that in this case, under denotes a distinct meaning whose term is Control
The following table presents the mapping of spatial under to its non-spatial usages associated with three aforementioned metaphors:
TABLE 22: The mapping of under when the LM exerts forces on the TR
The TR is lowered than the LM
The LM physically exerts forces on the
The TR is lower than the LM, regardless the resolution, gaze when the
The LM is conceptualized as exerting virtual forces/ influences on the TR
Of the five senses of humans, eyes play an important role because it‘s possibly the first organ that helps people construe the world Talmy (2000) divides the space
85 around a human into three kinds: personal space (referring to the space within the humans); peripersonal space (referring to where we can reach) and extra personal space (referring to the space that humans can see) Among those spaces, human sight exists in all of them while other meanings may not work Typically, when a person sees something exist, they believe in its existence The illustration for the above assumption is the invention of microscope which shows very tiny viruses Look at the following sentence:
(63) It was like living under a microscope…
Thanks to the use of a microscope, the researcher knows that there is a living entity Apparently, the idiom has a metonymic basis because vision stands for perception, a case of part for whole A spatial and metaphorical example is:
(64) … it was the shoes that gleamed and shone under each of the spotlights
The spotlights help the construers to grasp the scene in which each of the spotlights (LM) make it possible for the shoes (TR) to be seen easily In this case, the visual space of under is associated with the TR and LM to create the metaphor
Concerning the visual and functional information of under, the researcher does not advocate any other distinct meanings besides the prototypical one, ―Less‖, and
Summary
The following table presents the mappings from three spaces of thought of under as a spatial marker to a non-spatial one with a range of conceptual metaphors
TABLE 27: A summary of metaphors associated with under
Spatial modalities Conceptual metaphors Meanings
MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN Non-spatial meaning HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW
1.2 The first variant when the LM occludes the TR
2 Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
Spatial modalities Conceptual metaphors Meanings
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
Spatial and metaphorical meaning LANGUAGE IS A FORCE Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
HARDSHIP IS A BURDEN 1 Spatial and metaphorical meaning
2 Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning COGNITION IS PERCEPTION Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning RESTRICTIONS ARE
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning The following figure summarizes the frequency associated with the meaning transference of under in the corpus
FIGURE 25: The frequency of meaning transference of under in this study
The analysis has so far discussed the spatial and non-spatial usages of under Here is the summary of results for the analysis of under:
(i) The spatial meanings of under are presented in three modalities: Visual, Kinetic and Maneuver space Applying the rules advocated by Deane (2005), we find that beside the prototypical meaning coded by a pair of images, there are only variants of the prototypical meaning being looked from different perspectives presented by different image-schemas
(ii) The non-spatial meanings of under are Less and Control, which are associated with two metaphors ―MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN‖, and ―BEING SUBJECT TO FORCE/ POWER IS DOWN.‖ The Less meaning is attached to numeric values while Control meaning is attached to force or power The spatial meanings of under transfer to non-spatial ones while salient aspects of the DOWN image-schema and the force that the LM exerts the TR are retained
MEANINGS OF BELOW AND ITS TRANSFERENCE FROM
Introduction
Under and below are two synonymous words which may cause problems for
English learners to understand Tyler & Evans (2003) distinguish the usage of two words in terms of contact between the TR and LM This is true in terms of spatial configurations denoted by below; however, when below is used non-spatially, the researcher would show that the difference lies in the way of how LM of below is construed The thesis will present the meaning transference of below, and then compares and contrasts its usages with that of under.
Below as a spatial marker
Below can be traced back to the root biloogh (in a lower position), from Anglo-
Saxon be- "by, about" + logh, lou, lowe "low", Old Norse be + lagr (cf Tyler &
Evans, 2003: 127, and Etymology Dictionary online) In the corpus of the study, 89 instances of below denote spatial meanings in which 50 cases denote the prototypical meaning, 14 and 25 cases denote the first and second variants respectively
Like above, below designates the TR-LM functional configuration that excludes the contact between the TR and LM, presented as follows:
5.2.1 The Visual space images of below
The stationary scenes denoted by below could be seen in the following example:
(83) The courtyard outside and below Adare's window was a chaos of activity
Apparently, there is no contact bet ween the TR, the courtyard, and the LM, Adare‟s window, in the above spatial configuration, and our encyclopedic knowledge of building helps us confirm such usage because by convention, a window is built several feet higher than the floor level Additionally, the perspectival aspect of the frame denoted in the sentence is perhaps from ―an insider‖ due to the emergence of the word ―outside‖ Other examples are:
(84) Women dance naked in the strip club below his studio, the Mob has vested interests, deals…
(85) I stepped inside Spines pressed into the skin below my eyes, rip-tongued branches curled against …
It can be seen that the LM and TR in those instances are conventionally separated
In sentence (84), his studio (LM) is one floor higher than the strip club (TR); and in sentence (85) my eyes (LM) are uniquely different from the skin (TR) below them
In other words, the separation between the TR and LM associated with below is apparent regardless the gravity of the Earth Ideally, the spatial scene involved with below whether being seen in a low or high resolution, expresses a clear gap between the TR and LM The spatial configuration associated with below in its Visual space can be represented as follows:
FIGURE 26: The image-schema associated with below in its Visual space
The figure 26 is underspecified This means that the scene does not require the TR to be located within the scope of the LM, the salient aspect is that the LM is geographically higher than and distinct from the TR
All in all, the researcher supposes that the prototypical meaning of below is coded by the following pair of images:
TABLE 28: The prototypical meaning of below
The prototypical meaning of below is defined by a pair of images: a From the side at high resolution: the TR is separated from the LM by a vertical gap b From the side at low resolution: the TR is separated from the LM by a vertical gap
The gap between TR and LM is significant from the side at low resolution
In view of the vertical gap between the TR and LM in sentence (83), it is supposed that this vertical gap facilitates the construal that the LM is geographically higher than the TR Those instances are related to the location of buildings, rivers, etc.:
(86) a steamer with supplies, at some convenient point below Powder River …
―Powder River‖ does not refer to the whole river in general, it only refers to a particular part of the river where the steamer is supposed to be located Background knowledge tells that Powder River (LM) is higher than some convenient point (TR) in reference to the sea level, i.e., to the north of the Earth This usage of below is supposed to create the ―Topographical Distance‖ meaning supposed by Tyler & Evans (2003):
FIGURE 27: The representation of “at some convenient point below Powder River”
The above figure can also be applied for the spatial scene denoted in the following instance without arrow to show direction:
(86) You are also approximately twenty-one meters below surface level
From the above analysis, it is proposed that Topographical Distance meaning
(Tyler & Evans, 2003) is in fact the prototypical meaning of below in its Visual space We agree with Tyler & Evans that the emergence of below in such sentences like (86) is also the result of experiential correlation of human construal; however, as the image-schema remains unchanged while other significant elements such as forces does not contribute to the construal of the scene, the meaning of below in this case does not guarantee a distinct meaning
Back to the construal of sentence (84), Tyler & Evans would advocate a distinct meaning from the prototypical meaning termed “Next-one-down” However, the
96 writer supposes that the image-complex coded by this usage is only a variant of the prototypical meaning What should be taken into consideration is that in this case, the TR is occluded by the LM and the LM and TR are in a line from high above Noted that the TR and LM are clearly separated regardless high or low resolution
In short, it is better to conclude that two above usages of below, i.e., ―Next-one- down‖ and ―Topographical Distance‖, are variants of below in its Visual space
TABLE 29: The Visual space of below
The images represented in this space are locative and stationary, besides the prototypical meaning of below, there are two other pairs of images
Pair 1: a From the side at high resolution: there is a gap between the LM and TR b From the side at low resolution: the gap between the LM and TR is still clear c From the top of the scene: the LM occludes the TR
Pair 2: a From the side at high resolution: the TR is unique to the LM b From the side at low resolution: the TR is lower than the LM in reference to the sea level
Up to now, the prototypical meaning of below and its Visual space have been presented Describing a spatial scene in which the LM is geographically higher than the TR and there exists no contact between the two entities, below is a better preposition than under is
5.2.2 The Maneuver and Kinetic space images of below
When rotating the prototypical spatial scene involving below, figure 28 is deduced Drawing a line from the nearest point of the TR parallel the LM, people always find a line from a certain point of the LM that is perpendicular to the earlier line This again means that the gap after rotation remains significant
FIGURE 28: Rotating the prototypical image-schema denoted by below
Tyler & Evans (2003) investigate that the TR and LM associated with below or above (see the next chapter) are never in contact One may ask whether the LM of below could be the prototypical ground If so, the TR must be in the surface of the
Earth, or in other words, the TR is occluded by the LM In view of the
Distinctiveness Principle in the Visual space of prepositions, two prepositions cannot be applied with the same spatial scene The previous analysis shows that under is acceptable in such a case; therefore, below must be excluded Additionally, if the LM occludes but does not interact with the TR, the LM, if it is big enough, cannot be conceptualized as covering the TR Two above reasons perhaps make it clear why the meanings of below are less than those of under
In the following sentences, below is used with motion verbs:
(88) " Thank you." He watched her turn and go below, carefully placing stocking feet onto slippery road
(89) The sheet draped from the overhead rod fell to below her chin, blocking off her view …
(90) Then nylon rustled and something heavy landed in the footwell below my head: the backpack that Ma had kept…
Non-spatial meanings and the meaning transference processes from spatial to non-spatial associated with below
to non-spatial associated with below
The previous analysis provides two reasons why the meanings of spatial below are less than those of under, which also accounts for a less metaphorical usages: the lack of contact between the TR and LM As will be shown, the mechanism of meaning transference is mapping in which salient aspects are remained
(1) MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN
This metaphor emerges from the Visual space of below in which the vertical extension stands for growth in general (part for whole) This metaphonymy can be seen in the domains of NUMBER, TEMPERATURE, etc Here are two examples:
(91) He was cruising at just below seventy miles per hour
(92) Once you get past twenty degrees below zero, it's just about the same
In sentence (91), the TR is hidden (the speed of the vehicle that man was using) and the LM is seventy miles per hour However, sentence (92) explicitly denotes the TR, minus twenty degrees (-20), and the LM, zero degree Presenting the TR and LM in two above sentences, the researcher could have the following figure:
FIGURE 30: The first image-schema transformation associated with below
In the domains of NUMBER or FINANCES, it is easy to ascribe numeric values to the TR and LM, making it clear that the LM is often conceptualized as a standard for the TR to be compared with Sometimes, the LM is rather abstract:
(93) … to Winsome this year, and temperatures were well below normal
(94) we'll be able to bring the population below the sustainable level in this particular union…
(95) Another one of these below standard reviews and they 're going to …
Though numbers in general or temperature in particular are easy to describe, normal temperatures, the LM in sentence (93), in a place at a period of time in a year, have relative and conventionalized values The experiences from the sensory systems provide input for such a comparison The LM in sentence (94) refers to a number
100 priorly mentioned in the text due to the emergence of the article ―the‖
It can be seen that all the LMs function as the measuring standards, and the writer purposefully presents the lines from the TR and LM in order to show that the LM and TR can be presented in a scale In view of the constraints set in the conceptual framework, when abstract concepts are construed as concrete entities, there emerge ontological metaphors Look at two following sentences:
(96) Outside the sun dropped below the ridgeline and the shadows slithered in to…
(97) Yeah I 'm below the Mendoza line
Sentence (96) denotes a spatial scene in which the TR, the sun, is ideally conceived to set below the LM, the ridge line The LM is seen as a line, which is also denoted in sentence (97): the Mendoza line Historically, Mendoza line refers to a poor performance of a baseball gamer called Mendoza, and when a player exposes his deficiency as a hitter below 0.215 The second image-schema transformation of below can be presented as follows:
FIGURE 31: The second image-schema transformation of below
As can be seen, the LM is treated as a line, different from the former version when it is conceived of as an indeterminate object Another abstract example is:
(98) He hummed the tune below his breath- and then louder and fuller
Typically, sound can be measured in decibel, shown in a vertical scale; however, scientists show that sounds travel as a line with changing in pitch, making its graphic illustration ideally look like a sine graph with a horizontal axis
The mapping of below from spatial to non-spatial meaning is summarized in the following table:
TABLE 31: The mapping of below associated with “MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN”
(NUMBER, FINANCE, SOUND) The TR is lower than and distinct from the LM
The LM is conceptualized as a par for the TR to be compared with
The TR is lower than the LM in terms of values
Two words ―under‖ and ―below‖ are also associated with the metaphor ―MORE IS
UP, LESS IS DOWN‖, so what is the difference in such metaphorical usages between them? It is supposed that the answer lies in the way how the LM is construed The LM of below is seen as a ―par‖, a kind of ―standard value‖ for the
TR to be compared and contrasted with In the domain of TEMPERATURE, for example, it is seen that the phrase ―below zero‖ In fact, the zero Celsius degree (0- °C) is the point below which water turns into ice from liquid Another example is
―below the Mendoza line‖, discussed earlier On the contrary, although under also emerges in the domain of TIME (AGE), NUMBER, the LM is purely conceptualized as a reference point
Concerning the visual and functional information of below associated with the metaphor ―MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN‖, the researcher proposes that the construal of below in this case makes a distinct meaning, termed Less This is in agreement with Tyler & Evans (2003) In short, a non-spatial and metaphorical meaning of below (Less meaning) is ignited when humans construe the metaphor
―MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN‖
(2) HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN
Again, when one entity is presented priorly or higher than another entity, it is construed higher and of greater importance This is the basic spirit of social status which is also conceived as a ladder Additionally, this metaphor has its ground basis when a person of lower rank is supposed to express his submission to those of higher rank by bowing, or kneeing down:
(99) Esau Steadman chose a life mate considerably below his family's means and social standing…
In the above sentence, the wife of Esau Steadman (TR) is in a lower class than he who belongs to a family of upper class (LM) To be more precise, the social statues of the marital spouses are contrasted The frame/domain is SOCIAL HIERARCHY, and the meaning in this case is non-spatial and metaphorical This usage of below, according to Tyler & Evans (2003), facilitates the Inferior meaning It is our thought that the nominal phrase ―inferior‖ denotes the difference in the connotational meaning of this metaphor associated with under and below As we mentioned, the LM of under exerts force on the TR due to the potential contact between the two entities while in case of below, there is no such direct force
Perhaps, the lack of contact and the uniqueness between the TR and LM of below make the word a better candidate than under to denote social gap It is also observed that the LM of under associated with this metaphor are construed of potential power/ force on the TR The mapping of below associated with this metaphor is summarized in the following table:
TABLE 32: The mapping of below associated with “HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW
The TR is lower than and distinct from the LM
The TR is lower than the LM in terms of social positions/ power
(3) TOWARDS THE BEGINNING OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS UP; TOWARDS THE END OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS DOWN
This metaphor is also mapped from the Visual space of below, shown in the following sentence:
(100) The lines below the recipient's name, that which is called…
In this sentence, the LM is the recipient‟s name, which is located closer to the beginning of the domain of WRITTEN DISCOURSE The use of below in the sentence is spatial and metaphorical It is spatial because it designates the location
Summary
In the following table, the construal of non-spatial meanings of below is summarized:
TABLE 34: A summary of meaning transference from spatial to non-spatial of below
Spatial modalities Conceptual metaphors Meanings
MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN Non-spatial meaning HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW
OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS UP; TOWARDS THE END OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS DOWN
1.2 The first variant when the LM is seen as a line
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
Here is the summary for the meaning transference from spatial to non-spatial ones of below:
(i) Below, as a spatial marker, has one prototypical meaning coded by a pair of image complex in which the TR is lower than the LM, and there is no contact between them The first variant in the Visual space is when the LM is seen a surface which occludes the TR The second variant refers to a topographical distance, which could be presented in a map The Maneuver and Kinetic Space of below designate a clearance in the gap between the TR and LM; and the TR in its movement tends to be further from the LM
(ii) As a non-spatial marker, below is associated with four conceptual metaphors: MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN; HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN; TOWARDS THE BEGINNING OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS UP; TOWARDS THE END OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS DOWN.; and TRUTH IS
Of the four metaphors, the construal of the three first metaphors can be processed via the virtual image-schema without much complexity; however, the construal of the fourth metaphor requires the grounding experience and embodiment First, the listener must understand denotational meaning of the noun in the prepositional phrase, and then adopt an image-schema based frame to construe the whole prepositional phrase We see that the degree of abstractness increases from the first to the fourth metaphors
We once again confirm that the meanings of below like under can be categorized into three groups: spatial and non-metaphorical (below as spatial marker); spatial and metaphorical (orientational metaphor); non-spatial and metaphorical (structural metaphor) In comparison with the meanings of under, below possesses the following characteristics:
1 As a spatial marker, below designates a separation between the TR and LM, and the TR is not necessarily within the scope of the LM This salient aspect is always remained in the dynamic use of below
2 As a non-spatial marker, below is associated with other lexemes to denote abstract concepts The difference between the two words (under-below) lies in the above separation The LM of below serves as a standard for the TR to be compared with; below emerges in the domain of SOCIAL HIERARCHY to denote the gap while under tends to denote the potential power/ force that the LM exerts on the TR Language construers may base on this distinction to understand the difference of under and below in the same syntactic structures Last but not least, the construal of such non-spatial concepts requires an image-schema based frame for below We find that spatial origin of the word is remained even when the complexity of
107 abstractness increases The following figure summarizes the frequency meaning transference of below in the corpus:
FIGURE 32: The frequency of meaning transference of below in this study
The next chapter presents the meaning transference of over, one of the most interesting cases in the English language
MEANINGS OF OVER AND ITS TRANSFERENCE FROM
Introduction
Over is a special case amongst the English prepositions because it denotes a lot of both spatial and non-spatial meanings, and the image-schemas associated with over are very diversified as shown by both Lakoff (1987) and Tyler & Evans (2003) Due to the fact that Deane (2005) presents the meanings of over as a spatial marker thoroughly, the researcher only briefly presents over as a spatial marker, serving as a basis for the further discussion when over denotes non-spatial meanings
The following section will present three spatial meanings and nine non-spatial meanings of over, and explain that mapping associated with a number of metaphors is the mechanism for meaning transference of the word.
Over as a spatial marker
Over means "beyond; above, in place or position higher than; upon; in; across, past; more than; on high," from Old English ofer; from Proto-Germanic *uberi (source also of Old Saxon obar, Old Frisian over, Old Norse yfir, Old High German ubar, German über, Gothic ufar "over, above‖ In Anglo-Saxon, the antecedent of over was ufa, and the OED relates over to the Old Teutonic preposition and adverb ufa,
‗above‘, a cognate of the Sanskrit upari ‗higher‘ the comparative form of above
(cf Tyler & Evans, 2003:65; Etymology Dictionary Online) In the corpus of the study, 310 instances of over denote the prototypical meaning, 119 instances denote the Boundary traversal meaning with end-point-focus, and 162 instances denote the Reflexive meaning, all of which will be presented as follows:
6.2.1 The Visual space images of over
In view of the analysis of Tyler & Evans (2003), over possesses one prototypical meaning, fourteen extended ones with two clusters: A-B-C Trajectory and Up, and other derivational meanings Deane (2005) proves that those meanings are variants of the prototypical one from different perspectives on the basis of image-schema
109 approach Our reanalysis of over in the light of MIT yields the same results with that of Deane (2005)
To begin with, the proto-scene involving over as a spatial marker can be presented via the following figure:
FIGURE 33: The prototypical scene encoded by over
Unlike the separate configuration between TR and LM associated with above 20 , the configuration between the TR and LM of over can be in contact viewed in a low resolution The following image complexes show the prototypical meaning of over, being viewed in different resolutions:
20 The discussion of above will be presented in the next chapter
FIGURE 34: The image complexes associated with the prototypical meaning of over
The specification in the above figure is underspecified The figure 34(a) and (b) are two variants from different gazes Figure 34(a) designates that the TR of over must be in line with the LM from a certain point which is also perceived by the construer Similarly, from the downward gaze, the TR must occlude certain parts of the LM or even occludes it totally Like under, the TR and LM of over can interact with each other from a low resolution Here are examples denoting the figures:
(104) A few thin clouds painted over a deep blue field
(105) … the jacket bearing the insignia of a captain over a plain wooden chair
The Visual space of over denotes the static meaning of the preposition, and in comparison, with Tyler & Evans‘s analysis (2003), the researcher finds that the Visual space denotes the prototypical meaning and the so-called Covering meaning is just a variant This is simple to explain because when the TR is big enough to hide the LM from view, over denote such a sense In short, in the Visual space, over
111 denotes the prototypical meaning which designates the TR is above the LM In the following part, we present the dynamic meanings of over
6.2.2 The Maneuver space images of over
In case of under, the LM can either be the ground or other entities; and in case of over, we also find the similarity Firstly, when the LM is the ground, we have the following figure to represent the image complexes associated with over:
FIGURE 35: Part of the Maneuver space of over when LM is the ground
Noted that the ground in the figure is not necessarily the Earth ground To be specific, the ground is equivalent to the surface of the LM Here are two examples:
(106) He knelt and placed the thread back over the seam of the door, hiding evidence of …
(107) … from Colombia, lazily pushes a damp white towel over the sticky bar
Secondly, when the LM is unique to the ground, the following figure is deduced:
FIGURE 36: Partial Maneuver space of over when LM is unique to the ground
(108) I placed my hand over the mouthpiece so the caller couldn't …
(109) He ordered me to put tape over the customer's eyes
The configuration in (108) and (109) has two LMs, the first of which is the explicit
LM denoted in the sentence while the second is the prototypical ground When combining the Visual space and Maneuver space of over, we have the following combinations:
TABLE 35: The Visual space and Maneuver space of over
The prototypical meaning of over is designated by the following pair of image complex:
From side at high resolution: The TR is higher than the LM From side at low resolution: The TR is in contact with the
The Visual space Besides the image complex of the prototypical meaning, there are two other pairs of image complexes denoting static scenes associated with over:
Pair 1: a From the side at high resolution: there is a potential gap between the LM and TR b From the side at low resolution: the gap between the LM
Meaning Explanation and TR is unclear c From the top of the scene: the TR occludes the LM
Pair 2: a From the side at high resolution: the TR is near from the
LM b From the side at low resolution: the LM is lower than the
Maneuver space images a Initial position: there is potential clearance between the TR and the LM, with the LM oriented parallel to the ground b Image after rotation: the clearance may become zero
6.2.3 The Kinetic space images of over
As mentioned earlier, over can be used with verbs denoting motion and orientation Look at the following example:
(110) Chen leaned over the table where Larisha lay naked and cold
The TR is Chen while the LM is the table exerted a force by the TR In an ideal scene, we could construe the spatial configuration in (110) as follows:
FIGURE 37: The construal of “lean over”
When rotating the above figure with similar force from the TR to the LM, the researcher will have the following image complexes:
FIGURE 38: The Kinetic space of over
Regarding the constraints about the visual and functional information of over associated with those image-schemas, the researcher proposes that over denotes the following spatial meanings:
(1) the prototypical meaning which designates that the TR is above the LM;
(2) the Boundary-traversal meaning with end-point focus; and
(3) the Reflexive meaning when the LM is parallel to the ground and the TR moves towards the ground
Comparing with Tyler & Evans‘s (2003) analysis, it is seen that the number of ascribed meanings of over decreases This is not solely because of the difference in the theory but because of the internal conceptual structure associated with the image-schema representing the spatial meanings In view of the theoretical constraints of what counts a meaning as distinct in the light of Principled Polysemy,
Examining meaning and Focus-of-attention meaning associated with over may fall in the case of polysemy fallacy because the image-schemas of those meanings are not different from that of the prototypical meaning Additionally, the two meanings are created thanks to the use of collocational structures with typical verbs like look or watch Therefore, such meanings are motivated by formal structures rather than image-schema transformations or background knowledge
The next section will present the non-spatial meanings denoted by over and discuss how those meanings are transferred from the spatial ones
Non-spatial meanings and the meaning transference processes from spatial to non-spatial associated with over
to non-spatial associated with over
In this study, the total number of 764 instances of over denote non-spatial meanings which were found in many domains such as TIME (a subdomain of SPACE), NUMBERS (subdomains are temperature or noise), etc It is superfluous to list all domains/ frames to treat the non-spatial marker‘s meanings, therefore; the researcher only presents the conceptual metaphors associated with the marker as follows:
(1) MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN
This metaphor is also applied for under, below, over, and above (see in the next chapter), and frequent domains are FINANCE or NUMBERS Here are examples:
(111) … going well over a hundred miles an hour
(112) The house was home to over a hundred saurs - more, as egg lings arrived
(113) National Park boundary, the farm acreage covering over 3,800 acres in all
(114) Most of the former over age 18 are the latter, and probably more than…
The TR and LM in these above sentences are virtual; however, it is clear enough to visualize the configuration between the two entities In sentence (111), the LM (18 years of age) has a metonymic basis because TIME and AGE can be conceived as having numeral values The meanings denoted are purely non-spatial and metaphorical In comparison with Tyler & Evans‘s analysis, the More meaning can be found when the metaphor is activated What is remained from the spatial configuration of the word? It is supposed that only the very basic schematic meaning of over is retained, i.e., the TR is higher than the LM Once again, in this metaphor, the UP image-schema is retained, and as mentioned when analyzing the Less meaning of under, below, it is supposed that the metaphor has a strong basis in human daily experience with the world That is the higher position in real life is conceptualized more in terms of numbers or values This reflects the embodied cognition of humans The mapping from spatial to non-spatial meaning associated with the More meaning of over is summarized in the following table:
TABLE 36: The mapping from spatial to non-spatial meanings of over associated with “MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN”
SPACE domain Non-spatial domains (FINANCE,
NUMBERS, etc.) The TR is physically higher than the
The TR is within the scope of the
The TR is conceptualized lower than the
LM in terms of values
(2) HIGH STATUS IS UP + HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP
Secondly, the corpus of the study also reveals that the usage of over motivates the combination of ―HIGH STATUS IS UP + HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP‖ Here are several examples:
(115) what with the university administration being all over him about bringing you here…
(116) to share Luke, but she had no control over him Yet, that wouldn't be the…
(117) … though she had no actual authority over me I usually acceded to her orders
(118) The stern control Laird Cunningham exercised over himself, his household, the many slaves who served …
In sentence (115), the LM is him controlled virtually by a system of administration (the TR) which can be conceptualized as a rule-governed norm The LM is a collective noun consisting of different positions with holders, and the people in the administration have more power than the LM thanks to their higher status A similar case can be found in sentences (116), (117) In sentence (118), the verb ―exercise‖ denotes the virtual force that the LM bears Laid Cunningham, a character in a 1945 science fiction short story, is one of the LMs while the TR is the stern control The data analysis shows that this metaphorical combination is activated when over is collocated with nouns or verbs denoting power, authority, and control The emergence of the metaphor can be traced to the following spatial configuration:
(119) In order to see the young, lean-faced deputy standing over me, he had to be six foot four inches tall
(120) She stood over him Her unbandaged eye searched his face
Human background knowledge provides the information that once a person standing before the other in a row, he or she is of greater significance than the other That is why sentence (119) makes the person standing in front of the speaker clearer: his or her deputy who theoretically has more power or is at higher status than the speaker is It is apparent to conclude that the combined metaphor is spatially grounded Additionally, in this metaphor, the path may become vague An example is:
(121) “… wall about Michigan State's victory over Michigan”, Ted comments, too
The LM is Michigan, a baseball team while the TR is Michigan State, another baseball team It is not possible to figure out any force that the TR exerts on the LM; however, the path is still felt virtually In comparison with Tyler & Evans‘s analysis (2003), this metaphorical combination is equivalent with the Control meaning
As can be seen, the construal of over in this case is more complex than that of under or below In order to account for such complexity, people should base on the gravity of the Earth We know that the Earth tends to attract entities to the ground, and two entities also tend to have force of attraction to each other Therefore, ideally when both the TR and LM of over are parallel to the ground, the TR is exerting force on the LM due to its own dynamic force and the gravity of the Earth (see figure 39):
FIGURE 39: Gravity force of the Earth on TR and LM of over
In short, human encyclopedic knowledge already entrenches such forces attached to over That is the reason why over is involved in such a metaphorical combination TABLE 37: The mapping from spatial to non-spatial meanings of over associated with a combination of “HIGH STATUS IS UP + HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP”
The TR is higher than the LM
The TR exerts forces on the LM (due to the gravity of the Earth, and the object‘s gravity itself)
The TR has more power than the LM The TR ranks higher than the LM in the social ladder
The last metaphor emerging from the prototypical meaning of over is
―COGNITION IS PERCEPTION‖ Human beings construe the world through their five meanings, especially eyes which help them locate entities in space When an entity is within the focal range of the vision capacity, that entity, or its salient part, receives attention and becomes an examined one That is why Tyler & Evans (2003) suppose that over denotes Examining meaning and Focus-of-attention meaning when the word is collocated with ―watch‖, ―look‖ or other words denoting vision The two authors propose that when a person (TR) is higher than and close to the
LM, he or she can examine the LM easily; therefore, when over is collocated with verbs or nouns denoting examination, over carries the Examining meaning
Furthermore, when over denotes Focus-of-attention Meaning, it can be paraphrased by about However, we see that the image-schema associated with over in the two meanings is similar, the difference only lies in the nouns succeeding over; i.e., in Focus-of-attention Meaning, the noun is not necessarily concrete Therefore, an image-schema transformation from ―concrete‖ Examining meaning to ―non- concrete‖ Focus-of-attention meaning can be withdrawn Here are examples:
(122) Gage looked over the poster, his blue eyes shaded by the…
(123) … it happened, there's no use in crying over spilled fruit
(124) Sverine watched Hwa over the rim of her teacup
(125) Now, scientists sometimes agonize over things ordinary folks don't even see …
In sentence (122), Tyler & Evans would advocate an Examining meaning associated with the word ―over‖, and in sentence (123), Focus-of-attention meaning is activated The meaning of the collocation ―look over‖ in sentence (122) is easy to construe by adopting an image-schema based frame However, in sentence (123), over does not denote such kind of meaning because the phrase ―the rim of her teacup‖ refers to a specific location from which the TR has a look at the LM The meaning of the phrase ―watch over somebody‖ is different from that of the phrase
―watch somebody over something‖; therefore, it is better to deduce that over serves as an access node with its internal concepts, and when it is collocated with other structures, it facilitates appropriate meanings in reference to context
The researcher has shown that over is attached to other structures denoting viewing, listening, touching, touching, or smelling from which the person could construe the situation in a logical way In sentence (125), Tyler & Evans (2003) suppose that spilled fruit is the foci of the attention, and over is ascribed to such meaning We suppose that spilled fruit, the LM, is also the foci of the sentence, and the action of
―crying over something‖ originally denotes the action that a person is crying and his or her position is higher than that thing Additionally, our background knowledge shows that spilled fruit or broken toy (Tyler & Evans‘s example) cannot be reversed, in other words, the action is unidirectional Therefore, the meaning of the
120 sentence (123) is more abstract than the contextual information facilitates Additionally, the degree of abstractness from sentence (122) to (123) increases, in sentence (125), the phrase ―agonize over‖ even denotes a thinking process The framework constrains that when over is collocated with the mind‟s eye, it denotes a metaphor In sentence (122), the speaker uses his vision while in sentence (125), the cognition process is explicitly denoted via the emergence of the verb ―agonize‖ In comparison with Tyler & Evans‘s analysis, we have shown the approach of image- schema is appropriate in explaining how non-spatial meanings of over derive
Summary
Up to now, the thesis has presented ten metaphors associated with over when it is used metaphorically, and it has been shown that the meanings of over is a combination of spatial and non-spatial ones The spatial meanings are organized in three modalities of thought: Visual, Maneuver and Kinetic spaces from which the non-spatial ones are motivated The following table summarizes the meanings of over:
TABLE 43: A summary of meaning transference from spatial to non-spatial of over
Spatial modalities Conceptual metaphors Meanings
MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN Non-spatial meaning HIGH STATUS IS UP +
HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP
COGNITION IS PERCEPTION Non-spatial meaning 1.2 The first variant when the LM occludes the TR
TRUTH IS A HIDDEN OBJECT + COGNITION IS PERCEPTION
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
Spatial modalities Conceptual metaphors Meanings
2 Maneuver space Reflexive meaning Non-spatial and non- metaphorical meaning
3 Kinetic space THE CONDUIT METAPHOR Temporal and metaphorical meaning LINGUISTIC (INTER)ACTION
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning COGNITIVE ACTION IS A
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
AN ACTIVITY IS A PATH + LIFE IS A JOURNEY
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
2 Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning TIME IS A PATH AND
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning The thesis has also analyzed that human construal of over is more complicated than it seems to be To begin with, spatial over, whose salient aspect is the TR is higher and within the scope of the LM, can denote both static and dynamic meanings Additionally, the TR and LM of over can either be in contact or not, which makes over denote more meanings than static on or about The non-spatial meanings of over are: More, Control, Examining, Topic, Scanning of an interval, Transfer,
Completion, and Repetition Concerning the meaning transference from spatial to non-spatial of over, the following is reaffirmed:
(i) Non-spatial meanings of over are spatially grounded
(ii) The meaning construal processes are organized in the following order: (i) spatial and non-metaphorical meaning -> spatial and metaphorical meaning -> non-spatial and metaphorical meaning (See table 42 for the spatial degree associated with over)
(iii) Image-schema based approach proves to be appropriate in explaining how non- spatial meanings of over emerge However, the construal of over also requires a duplicate image-schema, i.e., in the case of Repetition meaning
TABLE 44: The spatial degree of over
100% non-spatial I couldn't get over the fact that my mother was dead
Less spatial The textbook was left over from a correspondence course he'd taken years
100% spatial He knelt and placed the thread back over the seam of the door, hiding evidence of …
The following figure presents the frequency of meaning transference in the corpus of the thesis:
FIGURE 45: The frequency of meaning transference of over in this study
The next chapter will present the meanings of above as the last case and then discuss the general mechanisms from which the meanings of the four words transfer from spatial to non-spatial meanings
MEANINGS OF ABOVE AND ITS TRANSFERENCE FROM
Introduction
This chapter presents the spatial and non-spatial meanings of above, and then explains how spatial meanings transfer, or the mechanism of meaning transference
In fact, Deane (2005) analyses above in the light of MIT, therefore, the task of the researcher is to represent his work via his own examples, serving as a basis for the further discussion when the word is used metaphorically As will be shown, above denotes one spatial meaning, i.e., the prototypical one and two other non-spatial meanings The meaning transference is motivated via mapping in which salient aspects in the SPACE domain are remained in other domains.
Above as a spatial marker
Above has its origins in Anglo-Saxon be + ufan, related to the same
Sanskrit root, ‗upari‘, as over In Gothic, be + fan was interpreted roughly as ‗being in an up position‘ (cf Tyler & Evans, 2003: 110) Of the total 336 cases of above, 215 instances denote spatial meanings in which 126 instances denote the prototypical meaning, 36 instances and 53 instances denote the first and second variants respectively Concerning the construal of the meaning of below in its Kinetic space, the researcher proposes that the overall understanding is in line with the prototypical meaning because the meaning denotes the UP schema Those meanings are shown in the following analysis:
7.2.1 The Visual space images of above
The reanalysis within the chosen corpus shows that two words ―above‖ and ―below‖ share one common feature: the TR and LM are not in contact in their prototypical configurations Therefore, the English language has two pairs of symmetry: over- under; and above-below, which constitute the vertical axis (Tyler & Evans,
2003:107) The spatial usages of above can be found in the following sentences:
(147) Her dress was a grimy pink, falling just above her knees
(148) I could almost see the glow above her head
(149) Jane shifted position to stand directly above Durant 's head
In sentence (147), the TR is her knees while the LM is her dress Though the scene is purely spatial, the usage of her dress is a case of part-for-whole metonymy because the exact part of the dress is the flounce, not the whole dress Moreover, the dress is of course in contact with the woman‘s leg; however, the separation/ gap between the knees and the flounce makes above best fit the scene In sentence (148), the LM and
TR are apparently very far from each other while in sentence (149), the LM and TR are not far from each other, but remain separated All in all, the usage of above in those sentences show that the TR and LM are unique and separated
The prototypical meaning of above and its static meanings are presented in the following table:
TABLE 45: The prototypical meaning and Visual space of above (Deane, 2005)
Explanation The prototypical meaning of above
The prototypical meaning of above is defined by a pair of images a From the side at high resolution: the TR is separated from the
LM by a vertical gap b From the side at low resolution: the TR is separated from the
The gap between TR and LM is significant from the side at low resolution
The images represented in this space are locative and stationary, besides the prototypical meaning of above, there are two other pairs of images
Pair 1: a From the side at high resolution: there is a significant gap between the LM and TR b From the side at low resolution: the gap between the LM and TR is unclear c From the top of the scene: the TR occludes the LM
Pair 2: a From the side at high resolution: the TR is far from the LM b From the side at low resolution: the TR is higher than the LM in reference to the sea level
Here are the figures representing the above image-schemas in different modalities The first figure is to present the prototypical meaning with a direct gaze, the line denotes the separation between the TR and LM:
FIGURE 46: The image-schemas associated with the prototypical meaning of above
When presenting the image-schemas of above in the Visual images space, the following figures are deduced:
FIGURE 47: Pair 1 of the Visual Image spaces of above: The TR occludes the LM
The pair 2 is ideally presented in the figure 48:
FIGURE 48: Pair 2 of the Visual Image Space of above: The TR is topographically higher than the LM
As can be seen the pairs of image complexes presented by Deane (2005) have shown that the Next-one-up meaning and Topographical-distance meaning are the variants of above‟s prototypical meaning in its Visual space Additionally, the salient aspect of above that the TR and LM are never in contact is remained, which is in agreement with our theoretical constraints
7.2.2 The Maneuver and Kinetic space images of above
TABLE 46: The Maneuver and Kinetic space of above
Maneuver space images a Initial position: there is significant clearance between the TR and the LM, with the TR oriented parallel to the ground b Image after rotation: there is still significant clearance
First Kinetic Image Sequence: a The LM forms part of the base on the locomotor surface; the TR is in open space, has force-dynamic impetus parallel to the base b Resultant state: the TR is on the far side of the LM from its initial position
Second Kinetic Image Sequence: a The LM forms part of the base on the locomotor surface; the TR is in either open or close space, and it is on one side of the LM b Resultant state: the TR is higher than the LM
The images in the Maneuver space can be presented as follows:
FIGURE 49: The Maneuver space images of above
Figure 50 presents above in the Kinetic space:
FIGURE 50: The Kinetic space images of above
Preposition above, as discussed by Tyler & Evans (2003), possesses five distinct meanings with three spatial meanings, and two non-spatial ones The prototypical meaning of above is purely spatial in nature The other two spatial meanings are Next-one-up and Topographical-distance The former meaning literally refers to the state of affair that a floor is one-level higher than the other floor functioning as the
LM The latter meaning refers to the geographical distance between the TR and LM, i.e., two places in the world out there, with respect to the topographical character of TR-LM in describing spatial configurations The other two non-spatial meanings are
More and Superior which refer to the ―virtual excess‖ and ―virtual higher position‖ of the TR in comparison with the LM respectively In reference to Tyler & Evans‘s analysis (2003), the thesis has reanalyzed three spatial meanings of above: the
Prototypical Meaning, the Topographical Meaning and the Next-one-up Meaning It is noted that though the uses of above are presented in different modalities, they still share common features found in the prototypical meaning Deane‘s work also decreases the number of distinct meanings of above, making its spatial polysemy closer than it is thought to be Concerning the visual and functional information of above, the researcher supposes that as a preposition, above denotes the prototypical meaning in which the TR is conceptualized higher than and is not in contact with the LM Other usages are its variants in different modalities, and they do not count as distinct
In the next part, non-spatial meanings and the meaning transference of above will be presented.
Non-spatial meanings and the meaning transference processes from spatial to non-spatial associated with above
to non-spatial associated with above
When treating the usage of above as a non-spatial marker, the researcher realizes that the non-spatial meanings of above denote the virtual configurations between the
TR and LM in the same way that spatial meanings do The direction of the TR is upward though the path is not necessarily vertical Following the four-layered activation of metaphors associated with above (Kửvecses, 2020), the researcher found the following metaphors:
(1) MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN
The activation of this metaphor is found in five domains: TEMPERATURE, FIGURES, FINANCE, TIME (the sub-domain is AGE), and SOUND In those domains, two distinct mental spaces are created between the LM and TR, in which the TR is virtually higher than the LM in terms of numbers An example in the domain of TEMPERATURE is:
(150) “Oh yeah, four degrees above absolute zero is damn chilly
The LM is zero degree (Celsius degrees, to be exact) while the TR is four degrees Like Boers (1996), we also realize that the LM is typically a kind of measuring standard, and the TR is compared with this point or value Another example is:
(151) His heart rate is above normal
The word ―normal‖ refers to the encyclopedic knowledge that a common standard of heart rate is approximately 70 or 75 beats per minute This signifies that the numeric value of ―his heart rate‖ is faster than the normal value due to the emergence of above, showing a significant gap between the TR and LM
Furthermore, it is seen that the LM configuration of above can be construed as a LINE itself, which is presented in the following figure:
FIGURE 51: The spatial or non-spatial scene of above when LM is a LINE
An example in which the LM is perceived as a line is:
(152) Andie liked them to be colourful and, above all, comfortable
In the above sentence, different attributes of the clothes are Andie‘s expectations, but the most important to him is the feeling of comfort, the TR Additionally, the phrase ―Above all‖ is seen in different domains, creating distinct mental spaces between the LM and the TR In particular, the TR is considered the best, higher than the rest which constitutes the LM, and the LM can be a multi-complex mass
There are instances in which both over and above are used to create an emphasis
(153) I mean this will be a PR disaster over and above what we 're already dealing with
The meaning of the phrase ―over and above‖ is easy to schematize ―Over‖ denotes a potential contact between the TR and LM while ―above‖ refutes such a contact Therefore, the movement of the TR is upward and tends to escape from the force of the LM, creating distinct gap between the two elements
In general, the above metaphor is a kind of image-schema transformation from the prototypical meaning in which the TR is virtually higher than the LM The mappings from the source domain to the target domain have two noticeable features: (i) the higher-than and out-of-potential-contact configuration between the
TR and LM is maintained; (ii) the shape of the LM as a LINE is still mapped and entrenched in the human mind The meaning of above is non-spatial and metaphorical Concerning the visual and functional information of above associated with this metaphor, we suppose that above denote More meaning, and the mapping is summarized in the following table:
TABLE 47: The mapping from spatial to non-spatial meanings of above associated with “MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN”
FINANCE, TIME (AGE), SOUND domains The TR is higher than the LM
The TR and LM are unique entities
The TR and LM refer to numeric values
The TR is much more than the LM
(2) HIGH STATUS IS UP, LOW STATUS IS DOWN
This metaphor was found in the sentences referring to social hierarchies (power), or a comparison between intellectual capacities An example is:
(154) Canton considered Jack arrogant, selfish, a loner who never helped the group and thought himself above everyone else
In this sentence, the phrase above everyone else refers to the interests, privileges of the person addressed; therefore, we could realize a case of metaphor from metonymy Let‘s look at a common idiom in the English language:
(155) to be heads and shoulders above…
This idiom does not simply denote height, but intellectual capacities or social status Human background knowledge tells us that two heads are better than one, then if a person is said to stand heads and shoulders above others, he or she is much better
142 than others Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that this non-spatial use of above emerges from the experiential basis of the above idiom
Presenting the configurations between LM and TR in the two above metaphors, we saw that the mappings from source domain (spatial one) to the target domain (non- spatial one) remain the ―higher than‖ spatial configuration; or in other words, only the visual image space from the spatial meanings are seen in the non-spatial domains Again, we could see a non-spatial and metaphorical meaning of above Concerning the visual and functional information of above associated with this metaphor, we suppose that above denote Superior meaning, which separates the social power/ position of the TR and LM The mapping is summarized in the following table:
TABLE 48: The mapping from spatial to non-spatial meaning of above associated with “HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN.”
The TR is higher than and distinct from the LM
The TR is higher than the LM in terms of social positions/ power
(3) TOWARDS THE BEGINNING OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS UP; TOWARDS THE END OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS DOWN
This is a common metaphor associated with above, found in the domain of WRITTEN DISCOURSE Configurating the LM and TR, we realized that the TR is not vertically higher than the LM, but written earlier (either on the same or different sheet of paper) The words, phrases between the identified and identifier are conventionally construed as the gap Therefore, this meaning is not counted as literal any more Above in this metaphor is either an adjective or a noun Here are some examples whose meanings denoted by above are spatial and metaphorical:
(156) but I will say that I believe the above statement to be true
(157) drawn by gravity from a cistern two stories above
It is seen that the visual information of above in this case is a kind of image-schema transformation from the prototypical meaning; the functional information is to
143 denote the spatial position Therefore, the meaning of above is purely schematic and does not make a distinct one
TABLE 49: The mapping from spatial to non-spatial meaning of above associated with “TOWARDS THE BEGINNING OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS UP; TOWARDS THE END OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS DOWN.”
SPACE domain WRITTEN DISCOURSE domain
The TR is higher than the LM The TR appears closer to the beginning of the discourse than the LM
(4) ACCESSIBILITY IS PROXIMITY, INACCESSIBILITY IS DISTANCE
It is our disagreement with 1994 Boer‘s idea that this metaphor is purely supplementary to the second metaphor To prove our point of view, consider the spatial configuration denoted by the phrase ―high above the sky‖ This phrase refers to an object or a number of objects which are high, very far from human reach High objects are mysterious because we cannot exactly examine their shape, size, or other attributes Therefore, out-of-human-reach objects are inaccessible to humans, creating a distance between the object(s) and the speakers or anything else in the reference frame Two examples are:
(158) He was above the law
In the above sentences, the LM is the law and suspicion respectively The law is evidently the highest regulation that humans have to obey, which is often seen through rules or regulations The use of above in this case clearly separates the TR and LM, making the inaccessibility obvious Similarly, the use of above suspicion emphasizes the sincerity of the TR (she) which should not have been questioned
As we have mentioned earlier, the Kinetic space of above designates the dynamic movement of the TR out from the LM, and our corpus also reveals cases in which the metaphors denoting such a dynamic movement:
The upward direction of the TR in the space is transformed and the schematic meaning of above is retained in this metaphor An example is:
(159) She had risen above, but she still had a piece of her past tucked safely away just in case
Summary
The thesis has presented one spatial meaning and two non-spatial meanings of above in the light of MIT and Extended CMT It is shown that as a spatial marker, above possesses the salient aspects that the TR-LM configuration are unique and out-of-contact As a non-spatial marker, above emerges in six conceptual metaphors among which four metaphors are motivated from the Prototypical meaning and the other two metaphors can be traced back to its Kinetic The mappings from spatial to non-spatial domains were again analyzed to show remained salient aspects of the TR-LM spatial configurations The meaning transference has its spatial basis and the mechanisms for meaning transference are mappings
Here are the similarities and differences between the two words ―over‖ and
(i) Spatially, the word ―over‖ denotes a potential contact between the TR and LM while the word ―above‖ does not The number of meanings of over is much more than those of above, which is a result of the encyclopedic knowledge that humans construe proximal entities or surrounding state of affairs much easier than those far away from their perception
(ii) Over and above are associated with a range of orientational and structural metaphors, all of which are spatially motivated Because of the salient aspect of above that the TR and LM are unique, above is used in the domain of written discourse and denotes the topographical distance between two places The LM of above is conceptualized as a standard for the TR to be compared with
The following table summarizes the meanings of above:
TABLE 50: A summary of meaning transference from spatial to non-spatial of above
Spatial modalities Conceptual metaphors Meanings
MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN Non-spatial meaning HIGH STATUS IS UP +
OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS UP; TOWARDS THE END OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE IS DOWN
2 Kinetic space PROGRESS IS MOVING
Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
KNOWING IS SEEING Non-spatial and metaphorical meaning
FIGURE 52: The frequency of meaning transference of above in this study
In the concluding part of the dissertation, there will be a discussion of the general mechanisms of the meaning transference of the four words in their contexts of use, and then the limitation, and recommendation for further research
CONCLUSION
Recapitulation
In this dissertation, the researcher has presented and analyzed the meanings of four words ―over, above, under, below‖ in the light of MIT and Extended CMT The first theory is exploited to discuss the spatial uses of the four words while the latter one helps us show a number of metaphorical associated with ―over, above, under, below‖ The following remarks were withdrawn through the analysis:
(i) The study has built a hybrid framework to account for the meaning transference of four English words ―over, above, under, below‖ in which the internal spatial structures of each word are treated as a departure for further discussion
(ii) The proto-scenes of the four words ―over, above, under, below‖ constitute the vertical axis which designates the relative contact between the TR and the LM In the case of above and below, the TR is not necessarily within the scope of LM extension What should be taken into account is the uniqueness and absence of contact between the two entities In the case of under and over, the TR must be within the scope of the LM extension, and the TR and LM are in potential contact (iii) Three spatial modalities of thought of the four words are Visual space, Maneuver space, and Kinetic space The spatial meanings of the four words are found in the three modalities, and it is proved that the polysemy of the four words is closely related and their transference can be traced back by adopting an image- schema based frame This means that each instance of use of the four words could be explained if construers adopt an image-based approach basing on the prototypical meaning coded by a pair of image complexes
(iv) The non-spatial meanings of the four words are attached to a range of conceptual metaphors The researcher has explored a systematic change from purely spatial & non-metaphorical meanings to spatial & metaphorical meanings, and non- spatial & metaphorical meanings of the four words The results of the analysis once again reaffirm the hypothesis that non-spatial meanings are spatially grounded on experiential basis and embodiment
(v) The analysis of non-spatial meanings of the four words, in the four layered direction: mental space - domain/ frame and image - schema, shows that these metaphors relate abstract notions conceived as concrete entities, and map the structure of concrete experiences onto abstract experience This is in agreement with the idea proposed by Lakoff (1987)
(vi) The overall mechanism for meaning transference is mappings Some non- spatial meanings of the four words can be ascribed with nominal terms; however, in certain cases, the purport or meaning potential of the word account for their usages
To make the story short, the aim and objectives of the study have been fulfilled within the set scope The two research questions have been answered The next part of the chapter will discuss the mechanism of meaning transference of the four words.
Human construal processes associated with meaning transference of over, above, under, below
The dissertation shows the importance of mappings in construing the non-spatial meanings of the four words Additionally, those mappings are associated with image-schemas denoted by the four words in their contexts of use The current analysis is different from previous studies in the aspect that the researcher did not rely purely on a single image-schema of the four spatial markers, he focused the analysis on the pairs of image complexes in the prototypical meaning and then its variants that encode the meanings in human mind It is crucial to note that the speaker cannot select all aspects of a spatial scene and then describe each of the aspects He or she chooses the most salient aspect(s) basing on his or her convenient situatedness and then makes an utterance to depict such a scene This is also the spirit of Talmy (2000) when introducing the term ―schematization‖ Additionally, all the three spatial modalities of thought of a single preposition were presented, and then the researcher explained how those modalities could be retained in the non- spatial meanings of the four words To be specific, take over as an example The meaning More in the metaphor ―MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN‖ retains the Visual space with static meanings while the Temporal meaning in the metaphor ―TIME IS
A PATH AND ENTITIES MOVE ON IT‖ retains the Kinetic space with dynamic movements The virtual Reflexive meaning is the result of virtual image-schema associated with the Maneuver space of the word Last but not least, an image- schema transformation approach helps construers explain how the four words best fit in certain cases of use Another example with over is the case of the Repetition Meaning 21 This is the result of two kinetic paths with the LM being conceptualized as a path Our analysis reaffirms the visualizable feasibility of image-schema, and it could explain how functional information like ―cover‖ of the word ―under‖ or
Finally, concerning the human cognition processes, the thesis explored that the semantic structures of the four words reflect the conceptual structure which also reflects the embodied experience from the real world The meaning transference processes of the four words can be represented via the following figure:
FIGURE 53: From embodiment to linguistic meaning (adapted from Evans &
21 Tyler & Evans (2003) termed the sense when over means again
Limitation of the study
The present dissertation analyses the four words as prepositions and their verb particle structure while ignoring their roles as prefixes This is one of the three shortcomings The second shortcoming lies in the data of the research; i.e., the researcher could not cover the whole corpus of COCA, which may help to find new meanings of the four words in their contexts of use, and validly verify the feasibility of image-schema transformational approach Last but not least, in general the researcher followed the qualitative approach though the percentage of each meaning of the words were presented, which may make quantitative advocators confused However, as mentioned earlier, the aim of the study is to explain how non-spatial meanings are motivated, numeric values are not salient aspects.
Recommendation for further research
It is supposed that there are three directions to develop the ideas proposed in this dissertation Firstly, it is possible to apply these results to explain how the four words are used for English language learners systematically so that they could acquire the semantics of the English prepositions better This idea is inspired by the discovery of Lam (2009) that correct use of prepositions or spatial language is one of the last obstacles for learners and many highly proficient learners cannot use spatial markers like native users The second direction is to make a contrastive analysis of the four words with their equivalents in Vietnamese, serving as a kind of notes for translators, interpreters because as being shown, the different image- schemas of the four words denote different meanings This may also explore how the two languages differ culturally, especially when dealing with non-spatial uses of the four words Last but not least, the meaning transference of the four words in idiomatic expression should be investigated We suppose that the basis of this study can help build a foundation for such an analysis because Jamrozik & Gentner
(2011) prove that prepositions retain spatial meanings in their abstract contexts of use
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APPENDIX 1 DICTIONARY MEANINGS OF OVER, ABOVE, UNDER, BELOW
Source: Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learners OVER preposition
1 resting on the surface of somebody/something and partly or completely covering them/it
She put a blanket over the sleeping child
He wore an overcoat over his suit
2 in or to a position higher than but not touching somebody/something; above somebody/something
They held a large umbrella over her
The balcony juts out over the street
There was a lamp hanging over the table
3 from one side of something to the other; across something
They ran over the grass
They had a wonderful view over the park
4 so as to cross something and be on the other side
She climbed over the wall
5 falling from or down from a place
The car had toppled over the cliff
He didn't dare look over the edge
6 on the far or opposite side of something
He lives over the road
7 all over in or on all or most parts of something
Snow is falling all over the country
They've travelled all over the world
There were papers lying around all over the place
8 more than a particular time, amount, cost, etc
She stayed in Lagos for over a month
9 used to show that somebody has control or authority
She has only the director over her
He ruled over a great empire
She has editorial control over what is included
We'll discuss it over lunch
Over the next few days, they got to know the town well
She has not changed much over the years
He built up the business over a period of ten years
We're away over (= until after) the New Year
14 past a particular difficult stage or situation
We're over the worst of the recession
It took her ages to get over her illness
15 because of or relating to something; about something
a disagreement over the best way to proceed
16 using something; by means of something
We heard it over the radio
She wouldn't tell me over the phone
I couldn't hear what he said over the noise of the traffic
1 across a street, an open space, etc
He rowed us over to the other side of the lake
They have gone over to France
This is my aunt who's over from Canada
I went over (= across the room) and asked her name
Put it down over there
2 downwards and away from the correct position standing upright
Try not to knock that vase over
The wind must have blown it over
3 from one side to another side
She turned over onto her front
The car skidded off the road and rolled over and over
4 so as to cover somebody/something completely
The lake was frozen over
Cover her over with a blanket
You get an A grade for scores of 75 and over
If there's any food left over, put it in the fridge
By the time we arrived the meeting was over
I was glad when it was over and done with
He repeated it several times over until he could remember it
(North American English) It's all wrong—you'll have to do it over
9 used to talk about somebody/something changing position
He's gone over to the enemy (= joined them)
Please change the wheels over (= for example, put the front wheels at the back)
Let's ask some friends over (= to our home)
10 used when communicating by radio
Message received Over (= it is your turn to speak)
Message understood Over and out
1 at or to a higher place or position than something/somebody
The water came above our knees
We were flying above the clouds
2 the people in the apartment above mine
A captain in the navy ranks above a captain in the army
They finished the year six places above their local rivals
3 more than something; greater in number, level or age than somebody/something
Temperatures have been above average
We cannot accept children above the age of 10
4 of greater importance or of higher quality than somebody/something
I rate her above most other players of her age
5 too good or too honest to do something
She's not above lying when it suits her
He's above suspicion (= he is completely trusted)
6 (of a sound) louder or clearer than another sound
I couldn't hear her above the noise of the traffic
1 at or to a higher place
Put it on the shelf above
Seen from above the cars looked tiny
I could hear someone calling out my name from up above
They were acting on instructions from above (= from somebody in a higher position of authority)
2 greater in number, level or age
A score of 70 or above will get you an ‗A‘
3 earlier in something written or printed
My client is the mother of the two above-named children
1 in, to or through a position that is below something
Have you looked under the bed?
She placed the ladder under (= just lower than) the window
The dog squeezed under the gate and ran into the road
2 below the surface of something; covered by something
The boat lay under several feet of water
an annual income of under £10 000
It took us under an hour
I'm actually in the film for just under two minutes
Nobody under 18 is allowed to buy alcohol
The wall collapsed under the strain
I've been feeling under stress lately
I'm under no illusions about what hard work this will be
You'll be under anaesthetic, so you won't feel a thing
5 used to say who or what controls, governs or manages somebody/something
The country is now under martial law
The coinage was reformed under Elizabeth I (= when she was queen)
She has a staff of 19 working under her
Under its new conductor, the orchestra has established an international reputation
6 according to an agreement, a law or a system
A man was detained under the Mental Health Act
Under the terms of the lease, you had no right to sublet the property
Is the television still under guarantee?
The hotel is still under construction
The matter is under investigation
She also wrote under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine
found in a particular part of a book, list, etc
If it's not under ‗sports‘, try looking under ‗games‘
He pulled up the covers and crawled under
2 below the surface of water
She took a deep breath and stayed under for more than a minute
The boat was going under fast
prices of ten dollars and under
in or into an unconscious state
He felt himself going under.