Meanings of english prepositions over above under and below and their equivalent expressions in vietnamese

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ TUẤN LONG MEANINGS OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS “OVER, ABOVE, UNDER,

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

ĐỖ TUẤN LONG

MEANINGS OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS “OVER, ABOVE, UNDER, AND BELOW” AND THEIR EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIONS IN VIETNAMESE: A STUDY IN THE LIGHT OF PRINCIPLED

POLYSEMY

NGỮ NGHĨA GIỚI TỪ TIẾNG ANH “OVER, UNDER, ABOVE, BELOW” VÀ PHƯƠNG TIỆN BIỂU ĐẠT TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG

TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT

M.A Major Thesis

Major: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

HA NOI – 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

ĐỖ TUẤN LONG

MEANINGS OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS “OVER, ABOVE, UNDER AND BELOW” AND THEIR EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIONS IN VIETNAMESE: A STUDY IN THE LIGHT OF PRINCIPLED

POLYSEMY

NGỮ NGHĨA GIỚI TỪ TIẾNG ANH “OVER, UNDER, ABOVE, BELOW” VÀ PHƯƠNG TIỆN BIỂU ĐẠT TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG

TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT

M.A Major Thesis

Major: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Thesis Advisor: Assoc Prof Dr LÂM QUANG ĐÔNG

HA NOI – 2016

DECLARATION

I declare that this MA thesis, entitled Meanings of English prepositions “over, above, under and below” and their equivalent expressions in Vietnamese: A study

in the light of Principled Polysemy, is entirely the result of my own work The

thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or tertiary institution, and to the best of my knowledge, neither does it contain material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text

Signature

Đỗ Tuấn Long

ABSTRACT

Meanings of English prepositions over, above, under and below and their

equivalent expressions in Vietnamese: A study in the light of Principled

Polysemy

Linguists have known that prepositions, especially spatial markers, develop their meanings in semantic networks in which the prototypical meaning is the core from which other extended senses develop One framework offering such kind of semantic network is Principled Polysemy introduced by Tyler and Evans

in 2003 This study focuses on providing additional information for the meanings

of the four English prepositions over, above, under, below beside works presented

by Tyler and Evans Comparative and contrastive methods were exploited to analyze data from three sources namely “Gone with the Wind”, “Vanity Fair” and

721 articles of contemporary topics on BBC and CNN The results show that over has two online meanings, under possesses one meaning not analyzed by two framework founders Particularly, over in certain cases means because of (reason) and by (a means to do something), under is used to denote a situation or state that

someone or something is experiencing Additionally, graphic illustrations for

extended senses of three prepositions above, under, below were added, which

facilitates learners to better construe the semantics of the prepositions The Vietnamese equivalents for those prepositions are presented systematically in the order of their appearances in the semantic networks, which makes learners‟ reference to those spatial markers more conveniently

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof.Dr Lâm Quang Đông for transferring me his specialized knowledge, his inspiring me the love in linguistics as well as his valuable suggestions, advice and correction during my the thesis throughout

I also take this opportunity to thank all my lecturers in the Department of Graduate Studies at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for many of their interesting lectures, which have surely contributed to the foundation of my thesis

Finally, I would like to show my deep gratitude to my family, especially my wife for her support, encouragement and understanding, without which my theis would not have been accomplished

Hanoi, November 2016

Do Tuan Long

TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF FIGURES

PART A: INTRODUCTION

3.2.1 Graphic illustrations for extended senses of above 32

3.2.2 Graphic illustrations for extended senses of under 38

3.2.3 Graphic illustrations for extended senses of below 43

3.3.1 Potential Vietnamese equivalents of over 49

3.3.2 Potential Vietnamese equivalents of above 58

PART C: CONCLUSION

List of Abbreviations

IELTS: International English Language Testing System, co-owned by

University of Cambridge ESOL, British Council and IDP Education

ESL English second language learners

ULIS-VNU: University of Languages and International Studies,

Vietnam National University, Hanoi

List of tables

Table 1.1: Schemas proposed by Lakoff (1987) for over besides the central

schema

Table 1.2: Analysis of “British Ambassador in hot water over joke”

Table 3.1: Paraphrases of (3.1) and (3.2)

Table 3.2: Summarized information of over

Table 3.3: Summarized information of above

Table 3.4: Summarized information of under

Table 3.5: Summarized information of below

List of figures

Figure 1.1: Central image schema

Figure 1.2: The semantic network for over

Figure 1.3: The semantic network for under

Figure 1.4: The Rubin‟s vase

Figure 1.5: The proto-scene of over

Figure 3.1: The semantic network for above

Figure 3.2: The More Sense of above

Figure 3.3: The Superior Sense of above

Figure 3.4: The Next-one-up Sense of above

Figure 3.5: The Topographical-distance Sense of above Figure 3.6: The Less Sense of under

Figure 3.7: The Control Sense of under

Figure 3.8: The Covering Sense of under

Figure 3.9: The Non-Existence Sense of under

Figure 3.10: Semantic network for below

Figure 3.11: The accurate semantic network for below Figure 3.12: The Less Sense of below

Figure 3.13: The Inferior Sense of below

Figure 3.14: The Next-one-down Sense of below

Figure 3.15: The Topographical-distance Sense of below

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

English prepositions are not easy for learners to acquire, and this is an obstacle for those who want to learn English successfully Perhaps, one reason is that it is difficult to characterize the semantics of prepositions Take the two following sentences as an example (Tyler and Evans, 2003:65)

(1.1) The picture is over the mantle

(1.2) The picture is above the mantle

In fact, both sentences denote a configuration in which the Trajector (TR - the picture) is higher than the Landmark (LM - the mantle), and it is impossible to decide if there is a contact between the LM and the TR However, another example posed by Tyler and Evans (2003) indicates something different The

sentence (1.3) “Mary hung her jacket over the back of the chair.” is interpreted differently from the sentence (1.4) “Mary hung her jacket above the back of the chair” It is universally known that when humans put a cloth or anything else on

the back of the chair, that thing should be higher and in contact with the back of

the chair In the sentence (1.3), the preposition over denotes what humans often

perceptualize, the jacket is higher and in contact with the back of the chair Yet, the meaning of sentence (1.4) is different; the jacket is higher and in no contact with the back of the chair

Furthermore, prepositions tend to develop a complex set of extended meanings,

for example, under has developed at least 9 meanings1, many of which do not appear to be systematically related Tyler et al (2011) reviewed that although linguists have long been aware that prepositions develop complex polysemy networks, the meaning networks surrounding spatial markers (and the systematic processes of meaning extension from which they result) have only become the

1

Oxford Dictionary (8th Edition, Cambridge University Press)

foci of linguistic inquiry in the last 20 years The best descriptive grammars and dictionaries present the multiple meanings of prepositions as largely arbitrary Three traditional linguists (Bloomfield, 1933; Frank, 1972; Chomsky, 1995) represented the semantics of English prepositions as arbitrary As a result, memorization has been often suggested as the best strategy However cognitive linguistics (CL) offers an alternative perspective, suggesting that the many distinct meanings associated with a particular preposition are related in systematic, principled ways (e.g., Brugman, 1988; Dewell, 1994; Dirven, 1993; Lakoff, 1987; Linder, 1982; Hawkins, 1988; Herskovits, 1986, 1988; Vandeloise,

1991, 1994)

In fact, after criticizing previous approaches to the semantics of English

prepositions (i.e monosemy and homonymy) and Lakoff‟s account to over, Tyler

and Evans developed Principled Polysemy framework, which was described to fill the gaps that other scholars leave

Though the framework could explain clearly and (for the most part) convincingly how new meanings developed from established ones on the basis of experiential correlations, three weak points of the framework still exist First, local and online

construction of meaning (e.g over and under’s) was not fully analyzed as stated

by Tyler and Evans Additionally, graphic illustrations for extended senses of the other prepositions were not provided, which to some extent makes it difficult for readers to construe the semantic extension from spatial to non-spatial Last but not least, Thora (2004) pointed out that the research results introduced by Tyler and Evans (2003) were somewhat vague as they claimed to use their native sense

of language to investigate English prepositions‟ semantics Scopus linguistics was not in use to collect data; hence, it needs revising to confirm the results

The context discussed above inspired me to conduct a study for my M.A thesis

entitled Meanings of English prepositions "over, above, under and below" and

their equivalent expressions in Vietnamese: A study in the light of Principled Polysemy

2 Objectives of the study

As mentioned in the previous part, this thesis aims at filling out the gaps that Tyler and Evans left in analyzing the semantics of the four prepositions First, we

wish to find out the local and online construction meaning of over and under in the light of Principled Polysemy beside works done by Tyler and Evans In

addition, basing on the analysis of the data collected with reference to the theoretical framework Principled Polysemy, we will provide graphic illustrations

for extended senses of above, under and below The third objective is to discover

potential Vietnamese equivalents for those spatial particles, which to some extent may facilitate the acquisition of those spatial languages Those objectives are

realized via the following research questions

3 Research questions

This study is conducted to provide answers to three research questions:

1 What are the new findings for the meanings of the four prepositions besides those presented by Tyler and Evans in the light of Principled Polysemy?

2 What are graphic illustrations for each extended sense of the four prepositions in the light of Principled Polysemy?

3 What are potential Vietnamese equivalents of those prepositions?

4 Structure of the thesis

The thesis consists of three main parts In the first part - Introduction – the

rationale, objectives of the thesis and three research questions are presented The second part is Thesis Development which consists of three chapters: (1) Literature Review and Theoretical Background, (2) Research Methodology and

(3) Findings and Discussion In the first part, I will carry out a literature review

on different approaches to the semantics of English prepositions and then provide theoretical background for the study The second part presents the methods to conduct the study and then research results will be presented in the third chapter The last part is Conclusion in which I summarize the research results and point out the research‟s limitations and orientations to further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this part, I will first conduct a literature review on different approaches (i.e Full-specification and Principled Polysemy) to the semantics of English prepositions, and then analyze the theoretical background for my research study

1.1 Literature Review

Bloomfield, Frank and Chomsky advocated different ways to construe spatial markers in English However, what the three authors supported is different from that advocated by cognitive linguists Numerous studies (Brugman and Lakoff (1988); Dewell (1994); Coventry and Garrod (2004); Herskovits (1986); Kreitzer (1997); Lindner (1981); Lindstromberg (1997); Sinha and Kuteva (1995), Tran Quang Hai (2001)) have been conducted more or less in light of Lakoff‟s theory,

so it is appropriate to review his approach to the semantics of English prepositions Tran Quang Hai (2001) compared and contrasted the semantics and pragmatics of locative prepositions in both English and Vietnamese to find out the similarities and differences In this study, only prototypical meanings of locative prepositions were analyzed, extended senses were neglected

1.1.1 Full-specification Approach

Lakoff took over as a case study in English prepositions and his analysis is

sometimes described as the full-specification approach to lexical semantics The

core point in his theory is that the senses associated with prepositions like over,

which are grounded in spatial experience, are structured in terms of schemas Lakoff supposed that an image schema combining elements of both

image-ABOVE and ACROSS prototypical sense of over The distinct senses associated with over are structured with respect to this image - schema which provides the

category with its prototype structure In sum, Lakoff claims that the schemas

which are different from the central schema are considered to represent distinct

senses associated with over According to this model of word meaning, the central schema for over has at least six distinct and closely related variants (see

Figure 1.1), each of which is stored in semantic memory

Figure 1.1: Central image schema (adopted from Lakoff, 1987:423)

Given the range of senses over is associated with in addition to the

ABOVE-ACROSS sense (summarised in Table 1.1), this model results in a potentially vast

proliferation of senses for each lexical item

Table 1.1 Schemas proposed by Lakoff (1987) for over besides the central

schema

According to Lakoff, over has, at the very least, several dozen distinct senses Although the number of senses is not problematic per se, the absence of clear

methodological principles for establishing the distinct senses is problematic There are two main problems: (1) a failure to distinguish between polysemy and vagueness, and (2) unconstrained methodology Tyler and Evans indicated that Lakoff denied the role of context in meaning altogether Particularly, Tyler and Evans (2003) argue that the examples in (1) do not represent distinct senses of

over (one specifying contact and one specifying lack of contact):

1a The bird flew over the wall

b Sam climbed over the wall

Instead, Tyler and Evans suppose that the interpretation of over with respect to contact or lack of contact derives from the integration of over with the other

elements in the sentence Our knowledge about birds (they can fly) and people (they cannot), provides us 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 According to Tyler and Evans, over

here is vague with respect to contact Tyler and Evans argue that while Lakoff‟s position on polysemy as a conceptual phenomenon is correct, it is also important

to take into account the crucial role of context in word meaning

Lakoff‟s approach has also been blamed on a lack of methodological constraints In other words, Lakoff provides no principled criteria for determining what counts as a distinct sense 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 user This problem has been discussed in some detail by Sandra and Rice (1995) and by Sandra (1998) [cited in Evans, 2006:342]

1.1.2 Principled Polysemy Framework

The framework Principled Polysemy first introduced in the book "The Semantics of English Prepositions" in 2003 is used to analyze the meanings of certain English prepositions and present them in semantic networks

In fact, the framework is built upon works by Lakoff and Claudia Brugman and

as part of cognitive lexical semantics; it is based on the following premises or assumptions (cited in Evans, 2006):

(1) Words and their senses represent conceptual categories, which have much in common with non-linguistic conceptual categories It follows that linguistic categories have prototype structure

(2) Word meanings are typically polysemous, being structured with respect to a central prototype (or prototypes) Lexical categories therefore form radial categories which can be modelled as a radiating lattice structure

(3) Radial categories, particularly meaning extensions from the prototype, are motivated by general cognitive mechanisms including metaphor and image schema transformation

(4) The senses that constitute radial categories are stored rather than generated

By analyzing the semantics of English prepositions, Tyler and Evans mean that

a preposition (or a word) has prototypical meaning and then from this meaning other extensions occur So, it is necessary first to identify the prototypical meaning of a preposition and present other meaning extensions in a semantic network for that preposition According to Tyler and Evans, prototypical meaning

of a word needs to have four following characteristics: (1) earliest attested meaning; (2) predominance in the semantic network; (3) relations to other prepositions; and (4) ease of predicting sense extensions

After finding the prototypical meaning of a preposition, it is crucial to decide whether a particular sense of a preposition counts as a distinct sense and can therefore be established as a case of polysemy Founders of the framework

provided two criteria: (1) for a sense to count as distinct, it must involve a meaning that is not purely spatial in nature, and/or a spatial configuration holding between the TR and LM that is distinct from the other senses conventionally associated with that preposition; and (2) there must also be instances of the sense that are context-independent: instances in which the distinct sense could not be inferred from another sense and the context in which it occurs

The framework Principled Polysemy is the fundamental basement in this study because it could successfully explain

… how new meanings develop from established ones on the basis of

experiential correlations Accounting for such processes in language

without simply relying on the often too vague concept of "metaphorical

extension" which has frequently been claimed to be responsible for the

usage of similar forms in different domains is a major achievement

Furthermore, the notion of "contrast set" is very useful in accounting for

the relationships of prepositions to each other, which are often not

sufficiently explained by opposing features Thus, the basic approach

is both innovative and convincing (From Thora, T (2004, para 11)

Review of The Semantics of English Prepositions [Retrieved from

of other prepositions They provided a semantic network for over with one central

meaning and fifteen extended meanings

Figure 1.2: The semantic network for Over (Tyler and Evans, 2003:80)

After analyzing data collected, we realize that over in the following sentence

could not be categorized in any of the senses

1.2 British Ambassador in hot water over joke

The above example is a headline on BBC, and there is no verb The complete

sentence, as understood by readers, is “British Ambassador is in hot water over

joke” We can analyze the structure of the sentence like in the following table

“Over joke” is treated as something new because it needs analyzing to understand the meaning of the whole sentence

British Ambassador is in hot water over joke

Table 1.2: Analysis of “British Ambassador in hot water over joke”

Normally, over may denote a spatial-physical configuration between a LM and

a TR in the above sentence; but in fact there is no such configuration So in this

case, over denote a non-spatial meaning In order to understand the non-spatial meaning of over, we consulted several dictionaries2; however, the answer yields

nothing The semantic network for over proposed by Tyler and Evans did not give

us any clues to trace the meaning of over in this case

Additionally, speakers of English may find it familiar to utter sentences like

“We heard it over the radio” (Oxford Dictionary) Over in this case denotes a

means of telecommunication by which the speaker(s) heard about something The

meaning of over in this case could not be seen via the network of Tyler and

Evans

Furthermore, we suppose that none of the five senses of under proposed by Tyler and Evans could be used to explain the meaning of under in the following

sentence from BBC

1.3 Urban Capital has sold 220 of 250 units currently under construction

In fact, under construction refers to a state or situation that a sold unit of Urban

Figure 1.3: The semantic network for Under (Tyler and Evans, 2003:124)

The second gap is a lack of graphic illustrations for each extended sense of

above, under, below, which may make it harder for readers to construe Additionally, the illustration of the semantic network for below is not accurate because Up cluster cannot be associated with below The above-mentioned gaps

will be bridged via the answers to research questions in the chapter 3

1.2 Theoretical Background

This study is conducted in the light of Cognitive Linguistics (CL), and

Contrastive Analysis (CA) Hence, it is necessary to revise theoretical

assumptions of CL on the Principled Polysemy framework, and principles in

contrasting English and Vietnamese

1.2.1 Important tenets of Principled Polysemy Framework in the light of cognitive linguistics

The assumptions of word meaning advocated by Tyler and Evan (2003:3) were realized by Kang (2012:10) when analyzing the spatial relations in Korean

There are five significant bases for Principled Polysemy framework which were

summarized as follows

All words including grammar terms are meaningful

Langacker, one of the founders of cognitive linguistics and the author of

Cognitive Grammar (2008), supposes that “all constructs validly posited for

grammatical description (e.g., notions such as “noun,” “subject,” or “past participle”) must in some way be meaningful” (p 5) This view is fundamentally opposed to the traditional linguistics theory which treats grammar as autonomous

rules free of a semantic component

In accordance with the cognitive linguistics view, it is well purposeful to analyze the meanings of prepositions in English which is often regarded as a grammatical morpheme One thing worth taking into consideration is that Adele

Goldberg, the author of Constructional Grammar (2006), argues that grammatical

construction that is stringed with lexical items and/or lexemes, creates its own meaning as a whole This view is contrastive to the traditional approach that each word with its own meaning is plugged in together to make up the meaning of phrases or sentences

A spatial scene can be construed in different ways

In cognitive linguistics, construal refers to how an individual perceives a scene; and in the study of prepositions, we are interested in describing a spatial scene composing a TR and LM Gestalt psychologists have illustrated the human ability

to construe a spatial scene involving two entities, a TR and LM, in many different ways The way of viewing a scene is subjective and different because it is done

on a personal level Moreover, the semantics of a language certainly have impacts

on the way we construe a scene, too Generally a human tends to view a scene by foregrounding the focus entity (TR), and by backgrounding the reference entity (LM) Yet, if the items are switched around of the foregrounding, a different construal will surely emerge The well-known Rubin‟s vase (or sometimes known

as the Rubin face) example, which was developed by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin, proves that a human brain makes figure or ground distinctions when

viewing the same picture and depending on which is focused upon, two different images emerge

Figure 1.4: The Rubin’s vase

Another way to obtain a different construal is by having different perspectives which were mentioned by Langacker (2002) first, to have a different orientation; and second, to have a different “vantage point.” How an individual human being assigns the orientation of an entity is a subjective matter For example, “left” and

“right” can be determined by the orientation of the speaker, the hearer, or even

some other viewer

The foregrounding/backgrounding (e.g., whether or not an entity is in focus, or highlighted), change of orientation, or change of vantage point will give rise to a different meaning and thus will be a great tool to explain the meaning extension Forthcoming analysis of English spatial prepositions will also demonstrate how English operates the lexicons of their language resulting in a different construal of

a spatial scene

□ Meaning is conceptual in nature

Cognitive linguists describe meaning in terms of conceptualization; and the meanings associated with a lexeme are instantiated in semantic memory as a conceptual representation, called an image-schema, rather than as discrete semantic features formal linguists have argued for (Lakoff, 1987; Johnson, 1987) Tyler and Evans (2003) explain that despite the ability to construe any spatial scene in different ways, we can generalize the meaning of a lexeme, e.g., a

preposition, in terms of a highly abstract and schematic representation of the spatial relation between the TR and LM, called a proto-scene A proto-scene, as defined by Tyler and Evans, is the unique spatial configuration that represents an idealized mental representation across the recurring spatial scenes associated with

a particular spatial particle (p 52) In other words, the proto-scene is an

“abstracted mental representation” that “result[s] in an idealized spatio-functional configuration” (p 66)

Furthermore, Tyler and Evans describe that “[a]s proto-scenes are idealized, they do not contain detailed information about the nature of either the TR or the

LM, nor detailed metric information concerning notions such as the exact shape

of the LM or the degree of contact between the TR and LM” (Evans & Tyler,

2005, p 9) In Figure 1.2, the bold horizontal line refers to the LM while the dotted lines refer to areas of vertical space higher and lower than the LM which count as proximal The dark circles represent TRs in each subspace corresponding

to the prepositions listed on the left of the diagram

Figure 1.5: The proto-scene of Over (Tyler and Evans, 2003:66)

The above diagram serves as a basis to illustrate the speaker‟s schematic images for comparing or contrasting the proto-scene of other prepositions Therefore, it should not be taken as a neurological or psychological basis of conceptual representation What is important to note, however, is a conceptual relation between the idealized elements (represented as a schematic TR and schematic

LM, rather than with a picture of birds or flowers, for instance) of real world experience

Prepositions are polysemous: Primary sense gives rise to extended senses

Cognitive linguists suppose that any lexical item, including grammatical markers (e.g., prepositions, past tense, determiners), has a range of similar and related multiple associated meanings This view of form and meaning relation is a contrasting observation from both homonymy and monosemy

The polysemy approach assumes that a word has more than one meaning and advocates systemic relatedness in extending meanings of the same form In other words, this approach supports that a word is a complex category with a central meaning (or primary sense), and multiple extended meanings which are related in systematic and principled ways Additionally, meaning extension create distinct meanings that are understood to be entrenched in our memory rather than pragmatically inferred on-line as the monosemy account claims The analysis of a preposition in cognitive linguistics often presents a semantic network (a meaning map) of a given lexical item (or a grammatical construction) in hope of showing the relatedness of each of the different senses involved in one linguistic form and

to capture the way in which other distinct senses may have derived from the primary sense and help the reader see that connection

The semantic network does not list multiple meanings arbitrarily as if they are random sets, it clearly presents the meaning differences in a systematic way showing the relatedness with the primary sense or the previous sense from which the new sense has derived from (oftentimes with schematic diagrams) It should

be noted that such meaning maps have shown to be a very effective teaching medium Hence, those maps serve as a basis to promote the learning of prepositions by ESL learners (see Tyler, 2011 for the application to teaching materials) Similar to all cognitive linguistics principles on categorization, a semantic network suggests that there is a fuzzy boundary between extended meanings, rather than absolute divisions

Meaning of spatial language should be understood with the functions as well

as the geometric information

Vandeloise (1991, 1994) and Herskovits (1986, 1988) showed that humans construe the meaning of spatial particles not just with information from geometric-spatial relations, but also via an understanding of the functions that each spatial scene carries It turns out that functional elements, which are humanly meaningful consequences of two entities being in a particular spatio-physical configuration with respect to one another (e.g., containment, orienting toward a goal, etc.), are also critical not only in construing semantic extension but also revealing overlapping semantic characteristics among spatial markers whose geometric configurations are quite disparate Thus, the notion that the primary sense of a spatial marker also involves a functional element has led to many studies on extensive polysemy networks including those by Tyler and Evans (2001a, 2003) Tyler and Evans offered a definition of a functional element as meaningful consequences of having specific spatial relations between entities in the world and argued that those consequences to a human being are an integral part of understanding each preposition They (2003) also discussed that multiple

meanings of a phonological form (e.g., English preposition over has at least 15

distinct meanings, including an On the Other Side Sense and a Finish/Completed

Sense) are not randomly developed, or in other words, those meaning are not

unrelated ones Cognitive linguists rather would argue that there is a reason why

the identical phonological form over has eventually derived many multiple

meanings diachronically

1.2.2 Principles of contrasting English and Vietnamese

In reference to Le Quang Thiem (2005) and Nguyen Thien Giap (2012), four main principles in contrasting two languages (English and Vietnamese in this case) are mentioned as follows

Principle 1: All linguistic components must be described adequately Contrasting should be conducted if and only if a complete description is available

Principle 2: When contrasting linguistic components, those components must be analyzed in context as a whole and their communicative functions

Principle 3: Linguistic components of two languages must be described via one method

Principle 4: The types of languages must be taken into consideration

Basing on the four above principles, a three-step procedure is suggested when contrasting two languages

Step 1: Describe or find out a version that fits the contrastive purpose Regarding the act of contrasting the original work and its translated version, a very first step

is to find out a translated work by a reputable translator

Step 2: Identify what can be contrasted, or in other words, find out which can be equivalent to which

Step 3: Contrast and find out the potential equivalents

From such prior analysis, we will clearly present the application of comparative and contrastive method in the next chapter

1.2.3 Principles of semantic extension from spatial to non-spatial

In order to explain the non-spatial meanings of the prepositions and provide graphic illustrations for extended senses of the prepositions, we based on the principles of semantic extension from spatial to non-spatial, which is mentioned

lexical item (context of the utterance) Hence it is reasonable to say that extended meanings of a spatial marker (a preposition) first arose from contextualized uses and inferences that were derivable from context With repetition, the inferences

became independently associated with the lexical form, e.g over and under, as

additional, distinct senses

Metaphorical thinking

Following the notions of embodied experience discussed above, the basic insight is that humans regularly think and talk about internal, often more abstract experience (such as emotions, thought processes, and states) in terms of our experience with the external, physico-spatial world Conceptualizations of recurring experiences with the world become entrenched in human memory and form foundational patterns for further conceptualization (Mandler, 1992; 2004) This is thinking metaphorically, a common, universal cognitive process

Humans regularly observe the recurrent co-occurrence of two distinct phenomena With repeated exposures, the two distinct but co-occurring phenomena become strongly associated in memory such that we conceptualize and talk about one in terms of the other For example, beginning in infancy, the child experiences a sense of well-being when she is held and fed Thus, physical proximity becomes associated with love and intimacy Later, people who are good friends or important family members are often in close physical proximity The result is that we form cognitive associations between two the separate phenomena such that we can use language about physical proximity to describe

emotional intimacy, as in: My sister and I are very close Grady talks about this

as primary metaphor or experiential correlation (Grady, 1997, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999)

Real world force dynamics

As a default, speakers assume that all elements in a conceptual spatial scene are subject to real-world force dynamics, such as assumptions about motion along a

path or that objects are subject to gravity (Talmy, 1988; 2000) When interpreting a novel, contextualized use of a lexical item, speakers assume that real world force dynamics are in effect

1.3 Chapter summary

In this chapter, we have presented six theories of meaning and word meaning analysis and then analyzed five important tenets of cognitive linguistics in Principled Polysemy Framework which served as a basis for Principled Polysemy The core value of the framework is the four characteristics of prototypical meaning of a word and two criteria that make a sense (of a word) to count as distinct In order to explain the semantic extension from spatial to non-spatial, we presented three principles supported by cognitive linguists (Mandler, Grady and Lakoff & Johnson) We also showed the principles when comparing and contrasting in one way from English to Vietnamese In the last part of the chapter, we criticized the full-specification approach advocated by Lakoff whose problems lie in a lack of methodological constraints and gaps that Tyler and Evans left which are to be filled in chapter 3

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

2.1 Data description

We collected data of four prepositions from two sources to analyze different

meanings of over, above, under, below in order to verify the results presented by

Tyler and Evans The first source is from two novels “Vanity Fair” and “Gone with the wind” The first novel was written by William Makepeace Thackeray (a British author), first published in January 1847 From this work, we could collect

530 sentences in which 282 sentences contain over, 215 with under, 31 with above and only 3 sentences with below The second novel was written by

Margaret Mitchell (an American author), first published in 1936 From this work,

we could collect in total 678 sentences in which 322 sentences contain over, 72 sentences having above, 16 sentences with below and 268 sentences with under

The second source is 721 sentences of different articles on BBC and CNN of contemporary topics (we started collecting data in May 2015) We could collect

200 sentences with over, 170 with below, 171 with under, 180 with above In

total, we have 1929 sentences to analyze One important reason to choose these two novels is that they were written by two authors who spoke American and British English which may show how language was used in the past Contemporary English is shown via articles of BBC and CNN

Two translated works of Vanity Fair and Gone with the Wind were translated

Trần Khiêm and Dương Tường respectively Both translated works were published by Literature Publishing House The information about Tran Khiem as

a translator is very limited, but perhaps his translation in Vanity Fair is welcomed

by lots of readers because of the fact that the publishing house ranks it third in their advertisement for classic novels3 Duong Tuong, on the other hand, is a renowned translator in Vietnam and has won many prizes for his contribution to

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introducing foreign literature to Vietnam Though Duong Tuong admitted some

faulty details in translation (in other works, not in Gone with the Wind), his

competence in translation cannot be denied

2.2 Research methods

In order to answer the research questions, a number of methods were exploited First, we analyzed data collected in the light of Principled Polysemy, and then check the results with what was presented by Tyler and Evans We applied steps instructed by the two authors to first construe the context of the sentence and then the meaning of the preposition We then categorized the senses of the preposition

in the semantic network proposed by Tyler and Evans We take two following

sentences from Vanity Fair as examples The first one denotes a spatial relation,

but the second one contains a non-spatial relation between participants

2.1 „Over Mrs Flamingo‟s crimson silk gown,‟ said good-natured Mrs Sedley 2.2 And he handed her over the letter

The first sentence is an answer to a question of location In this sentence, the TR

is hidden while the LM is “Mrs Flamingo’s crimson silk gown” In this case the

TR is construed to be higher than the LM, and of course this is reflected in the

proto-scene of over as supposed by Tyler and Evans

However, there is no spatial relation in the sentence (2.2) Hence, over in this case

does not denote the prototypical meaning Reading the sentence, we can paraphrase it as follows:

2.2‟ He handed the letter over to her

This sentence cannot be interpreted figuratively The TR is she (her is used to be grammatically correct), and the LM is he Reading the sentence, we see that there

is a transfer in the control of the letter between two human participants, he and she Reconsidering the senses of over advocated by Tyler and Evans, we categorize over in this case as having a Transfer Sense If we found some “off-

frame” sentences, we carefully reanalyzed them and recommended the semantic gaps that Principled Polysemy might leave

Additionally, the descriptive method was used to provide the graphic

illustrations for extended senses of the three prepositions above, under, below In

the light of Principled Polysemy, we found the relation between the TR and LM

in each sentence and generalized spatial configuration that each sense of the prepositions denotes Additionally, the method also proves workable in order to

analyze the “online construction meaning” of over and under In fact, after

collecting data, we analyzed the meaning of each preposition in the light of Principled Polysemy to decide if a sense counts as distinctive However, some senses advocated by Tyler and Evans have not been illustrated via our data We consulted several lecturers from Division of Translating and Interpreting, ULIS – VNU and a US expert working for ULIS to check if Tyler and Evans‟s sentences are accepted though the two authors claimed that their native sense of language was used to create the illustrative sentences

Furthermore, the comparative and contrastive method is also used The method

is also used to compare the meanings and functions of each preposition in the original classic works with their Vietnamese translated works Basing on this, we could find some translated versions of each preposition In the light of the framework and translation equivalence theory, we found some equivalents and translated versions of those prepositions It is noted that translated versions are accepted in Vietnamese, but in fact they may not be equivalents Tyler and Evans did give distinct senses of the four prepositions in context, so we suppose that we would again interpret the contexts of the sentences including four prepositions in terms of function as well as ways of construing the spatial configuration If the translated words and the original ones denote the same configuration as well as function, they are equivalents If not, they are mere variants used at the translators‟ discretion

Finally, a questionnaire containing various translated versions of the prepositions was used The questionnaire was designed with 15 multiple choice questions After consulting some experts from the Division of Translating and Interpreting, we translated 15 sentences containing the prepositions Prepositions were translated differently while the other parts are the same in Vietnamese The respondents were asked to choose the options which were the most appropriately

translated Most of the chosen sentences to translate denote local and online construction meaning of over We had 30 lecturers from the Faculty of English

(ULIS-VNU4) complete the questionnaire

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University of Languages and International Studies - Vietnam National University, Hanoi

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Research question 1

It is reaffirmed that Tyler and Evans did use the framework Principled

Polysemy to not only analyze the semantics of over, above, below, under but a

wide range of English prepositions

We analyzed the semantics of the four prepositions in the light of Principled

Polysemy The results from such analysis for above and below yield nothing new However, when analyzing the semantics of over and under, Tyler and Evans could not show that over possesses at least two other online meanings; i.e because of and by; under has one online meaning which denotes that someone or

something is experiencing a state or situation Hence, the researcher will bridge

those gaps via answering research question 1

3.1.1 New findings for the meanings of over

3.1.1.1 Over means because of

Back to the sentence we posed in the literature review, we have the following:

1.5 British Ambassador in hot water over joke

The phrase “British Ambassador in hot water” signifies that the Ambassador was

in trouble One question immediately emerging is “What causes him such a problem?” Hence, it is reasonable to understand the context of the article whose

title is “British Ambassador in hot water over joke” on BBC After reading the

text, we see that it is the joke made by the British Ambassador that caused him trouble Actually when reading the text from BBC in details the joke that the Ambassador told about Islam made Egyptian angry and he had to apologize

Thus, over in above sentence can be paraphrased as “because of” or “due to” The

sentence can be paraphrased as follows “British Ambassador is in hot water

because of his joke.” Two following sentences can be good paraphrases of (1.5)

“It is the joke that made the British Ambassador in trouble” or “The joke is the reason why the British Ambassador was in trouble.”

In short, over in this case does not denote a spatial meaning, but a non-spatial

one whose paraphrase is “because of”

Similarly, we analyze two following sentences

3.1 France teachers strike over government reforms

3.2 French teachers strike over change plans

Once again, (3.1) and (3.2) are headlines on BBC In the two above sentences,

“strike” is used as a verb Generally speaking, in Western countries, a strike may occur when the citizens are not happy with the policy of the authorities, or in other words, someone or a group of people strike when a thing or a policy does harm to their benefits Perhaps, in order to understand the meaning of (3.1) and (3.2), it is unnecessary to read two articles because of encyclopedic knowledge mentioned above In above sentences, “government reforms” and “change plans” are reasons for the strike of French teachers The following table provides paraphrases for the sentences

3.1 France teachers strike over government reforms Paraphrase France teachers strike because of government reforms 3.2 French teachers strike over change plans Paraphrase French teachers strike because of change plans

Table 3.1: Paraphrases of (3.1) and (3.2)

Additionally, we can also paraphrase the sentence (3.1) as “It is the government reforms that make the France teachers strike” or “The government reforms are the reasons why the France teachers strike.” Sentence (3.2) can be paraphrased as “It

is the change plans that make the French teachers strike” or “Change plans are the reasons why the French teachers strike.”

So far, four sentences in which over means because of have been analyzed The

structure of the four sentences is Subject – Verb – Over – Noun phrase Due to

the fact that over means because of, the structure of such sentences can be

paraphrased as “Noun phrase (subject) – (to) be – reason why – Subject – Verb.” Other sentences from BBC which have the same sentence structure (subject – verb – over – noun phrase) are found

3.3 The US has charged six Chinese nationals over the alleged theft of

technology used in mobile phones

3.4 Sri Lanka cricket officials removed over harassment claims

3.5 Toyota and Nissan also said they would be recalling 6.5 million vehicles over

the same issue [issue: faulty airbag]

3.6 She faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of dereliction of duty over

her role in a controversial rice subsidy scheme

3.7 Penalties were also handed to Lazio, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Reggina over

attempts to influence refereeing appointments

In sentence (3.3), the noun phrase after over denotes a crime, the clause “The US

has charged six Chinese nationals” denotes a state of affair Encyclopedic knowledge tells us that the government would charge someone because of their crime Hence, basing on the meaning of surrounded words and phrases, it is

reasonable to conclude that the meaning of over in (3.3) is because of

(3.4) is a headline on BBC, thus there is no need for a complete sentence The whole sentence, as construed by readers, is “Sri Lanka cricket officials were

removed over harassment claims.” The phrase “Sri Lanka cricket officials

removed” denotes a state of affair in which some authorities were sacked The phrase “harassment claims” refers to a kind of chargeable crime Encyclopedic knowledge shows that someone is sacked because of their wrongdoings Hence, it

is guessed that over means because of A quick look at the article tells us that

what is supposed is correct Harassment claims are reasons why Sri Lanka cricket officials were sacked

The same occurs with sentence (3.5) in which over means because of Reading

the article, we see that the issue is the faulty airbag in the products by Toyota and Nissan It is this mistake that forces two manufacturing companies to recall their products

Sentence (3.6) seems to be more complex, but if omitting the phrase “if found guilty of dereliction of duty” and consulting the whole article, we have the following sentence (3.6b)

3.6b Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces up to 10 years in prison

over her role in a controversial rice subsidy scheme

In this sentence, the clause “Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces up

to 10 years in prison” refers to a difficult situation for the former prime minister,

“her role” refers to the intervention and direction of Yingluck in the rice subsidy scheme which caused a heated debate in Thai politics a couple of years ago From such analysis of the meaning of other components in the sentence, we can

conclude that over also means because of in this sentence

The phrase “attempts to influence refereeing appointments” in sentence (3.7) refers to a prohibited action in football regulation; and certainly if a club violates,

it will be punished Reading the sentence and using encyclopedic knowledge, we know that Lazio, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Reggina are names of four football clubs in Italy The first clause “Penalties were also handed to Lazio, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Reggina” denotes a state of affair that four football clubs were punished because of their wrongdoings in reference to the regulation of football

So far, the sentence (3.7) can be understood as follows

3.7b Four football clubs are punished over wrongdoings

Thus, it can be concluded that over in this sentence also means because of

One more example was found in an IELTS5 book published in January 2008

3.8 Bloch also believed that the first war – likely fought near the ancient city of

Essalt on the Jordan River – could have been fought over the city‟s precious

supplies of the mineral

In order to easily construe the meaning of over, we simplify the sentence structure

by consulting the whole text and exploiting encyclopedic knowledge We have

following sentence (3.8b)

3.8b The first war occurred over the supplies of salt

Generally, human beings would say “A war occurs when/ why/ how and where”

The phrase “the supplies of salt” does not denote time, manner and location, but

reason Thus the sentence 2.9b can be rewritten as “The first war occurred

because of the supplies of salt”

So far, we have analyzed nine sentences (one in the literature review) in which

over means because of The sentence structure of those ones is “Subject – Verb –

over – Noun phrase”

It is time to decide if over in the nine above situations has created a distinct

sense in the light of Principled Polysemy There are two criteria for a sense to

count as distinct: (1) for a sense to count as distinct, it must involve a meaning

that is not purely spatial in nature, and/or a spatial configuration holding between

the trajectory (TR) and landmark (LM) that is distinct from the other senses

conventionally associated with that preposition; and (2) there must also be

instances of the sense that are context-independent: instances in which the distinct

sense could not be inferred from another sense and the context in which it occurs

Regarding the first criterion, it is seen that no sense of 15 senses of over denotes

“because of” and more importantly, no sentence in the nine above-analyzed

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Council and IDP Education

sentences denotes a spatial configuration between a TR and LM, so criterion 1 is fulfilled

However, the second criterion in terms of context-independence, over in the

above sentences cannot satisfy In general, these verbs “strike, remove, charge, recall or fight” must be entailed by a cause Particularly, people say “strike because of something”, “somebody is removed from office because of something

or their wrongdoings”, “charge somebody because of something or their wrongdoings”, “a company recalls its products because of the fact that there is something wrong with the products”, “fight because of somebody or something”

If these verbs are not in use, over cannot denote “because of” Even in the

sentence (3.7) “Penalties were also handed to Lazio, AC Milan, Fiorentina and

Reggina over attempts to influence refereeing appointments”, we must base on

context to interpret to the meaning of over The phrase “Attempts to influence

refereeing appointments” denotes a negative thought in the mind of football fans and undoubtedly, this action deserves some forms of penalties

In short, because of is an online meaning of over in the light of Principled

Polysemy

3.1.1.2 Over means by (refers to a means to do something)

Another frequent use of over is also reflected in the sentence (3.9)

3.9 She wouldn’t tell me over the phone (Oxford Dictionary)

In this sentence, there is no spatial configuration between TR and LM, and of course to construe this sentence, we must make use of context Two people were having a conversation, and there is something shared between them Perhaps both speakers are mentioning a state of affair We can give more details to the sentence

as follows

A: Would Mary tell you about her secret?

B: She wouldn‟t tell me over the phone