Languages & Linguistics
Prepositions of Time
Prepositions of time are words that indicate when an action takes place. Common prepositions of time include "at," "on," and "in," which are used to specify specific points in time, days, and longer periods, respectively. These prepositions help to provide clarity and context when discussing time-related events and activities.
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eBook - PDFIssues in Cognitive Linguistics
1993 Proceedings of the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference
- Leon de Stadler, Christoph Eyrich, Leon de Stadler, Christoph Eyrich(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Semantic extension from spatial meaning into the temporal domain is fairly ubiquitous among the English prepositions. What is of concern in this paper is an even less spatial, partially temporal, and clearly grammaticalized func-tion of certain prepositions in English. In the remainder of this paper, I will address one such polygramous, poly functional, or heterosemous usage, that of aspectual particle, arguing that in addition to their myriad other usages and 228 Sally A. Rice senses, many prepositions play a discernible aspectual role or at least convey aspectual meaning as well. By no means do I assume that the preposition is a fully grammaticalized aspectual marker in English or that it is unequivocably functioning to signal aspect. But indicating some sort of aspectual meaning is part of the preposition's function in the sentences under examination here. In some cases, the preposition is solely responsible for the aspectual inter-pretation that the sentence receives. Signalling aspect isn't such a strange or unexpected function for prepositions to have, considering that their aspectual meanings seem to be natural extensions of certain spatial meanings. Just as they can modulate the location of an entity in space or highlight the relevant contours or topography of a landmark object, so too can they modulate or reshape the contours of an event. Prepositions have long figured prominently in philosophical and linguistic work on verbal aspect since Vendler 1957 invoked them as a test for deter-mining the inherent aspectual categories of verbs and sentences. Specifically, temporal expressions with in and for have usually been compared. Accom-plishments or verbs and their complements denoting completed or culminated events readily combine with temporal PPs headed by in, whereas verbs and their complements denoting activities (that can, in principle, continue without limit) tend to combine with phrases headed by for.
eBook - PDF- Kofi Yakpo(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Language Science Press(Publisher)
8 Spatial and temporal relations Location in space is expressed by elements from diverse word classes and through a large variety of constructions. Some of the means employed for the expression of spatial relations are carried over into the expression of temporal relations but there are also independent ways of expressing location in time. 8.1 Spatial relations Prepositions, locative nouns, and locative verbs play a part in expressing spatial rela-tions. Other items involved are motion verbs – verbs whose meanings include a motion component. Te relation between “fgure” and “ground” may be mediated through vari-ous types of structures. Te expression of source and goal is of particular interest in the disucssion because it may involve the use of various competing structures. 8.1.1 Locative prepositions Prepositions are employed to express the location and direction of motion of an entity (the “fgure”) in relation to a place (the “ground”). Locative prepositions and locative nouns (cf. §8.1.2) belong to separate word classes, but some shared characteristics make the distinction less clear-cut. Table 8.1 contains the Pichi inventory of prepositions. Tere are no postpositions in Pichi. Non-locative roles expressed by prepositions are covered in §9.1.3. Note that Pichi also has the two temporal prepositions ápás ‘afer’ and síns ‘since’ (cf. §8.2). Table 8.1 Locative uses of prepositions Preposition Gloss Location/direction Other semantic roles/uses na ‘loc’ Genera l location (at rest) — fɔ ‘prep’ G eneral location (at rest) Various non-locative roles pan ‘on’ Superior location ‘in addition to’ frɔn ‘from’ Source ‘since (temporal)’ sóté ‘up to’ Extent ‘until (temporal), extremely (adv)’ to ‘to’ Goal Complementiser 8 Spatial and temporal relations Locative prepositions introduce adverbial prepositional phrases. Prepositions difer from locative nouns because they cannot be employed in the syntactic position of nouns.
eBook - PDF- Frank Van Eydne(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
Translation of prepositions in multilingual MT 149 Whatever the expression of the temporal phrase (a simple np or a pp headed by a locative time preposition), the representation will be identical. That is, all the phrases on Monday, lundi, el lunes, Montag will be identical, aside from the day of the week, from the point of view of an Interface Structure (hereafter IS) representation: (13) {role=mod, cat=np, modsr=time} I {gov = n} I {lu = IDENTIFIER} where 'role' indicates the distinction between a mod(ifier) and an argument, 'IDENTIFIER' is a variable standing for the days of the week and the modsr value 'time' is used for illustration only. The precise value of this modsr - which could easily be refined -is not relevant here (see note 4). What is important is to notice that the syntactic units corresponding to on Monday would all be expressed as nominal phrases thus eliminating the need for complex structural transfer. There are however two 'syntactic' objections to this simple approach. Although this was rarely stressed in traditional grammar, prepositions can be recursively stacked (cf. Jackendoff, 1973; Jaworska, 1986; Radford, 1988: 246 ff.). 5 Consider: (14) EN From within the community, the problem looks immense EN Over in Asia, the computer industry is thriving DE Bis vor zwei Jahren gab es wenig Forschritte im Projekt FR Deja depuis avant la guerre, on ne trouvait plus ce produit Moreover, prepositional phrases allow internal modifications (again see the reference above). There are many natural examples such as: (15) Immediately before the meeting Ten years after the meeting From thirty feet inside the space station Two miles under the surface In such examples, the pp is internally modified. In X-bar syntax, this kind of modification might be expressed as follows: 150 Jacques Durand (16) SPEC N: immediately before the meeting (where SPEC stands for any phrase which can function as modifier of the group that comes after it).
eBook - PDFTwo First Languages
Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children
- Jürgen M. Meisel(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
CHAPTER 6 PREPOSITIONS IN BILINGUAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Swantje Klinge 124 Two First Languages 0. INTRODUCTION. The present study documents the acquisition of prepositions by three bilingual first language learners, focusing on syntactic and semantic aspects, both being fairly difficult to analyze when studying a word class as diverse as prepositions. The study will also try to explore the functions and interplay of linguistic and nonlinguistic strategies employed by first language learners, i.e. whether one can account for a general sequence of acquisition based on perceptual salience, semantic and syntactic complexity, and, perhaps as an additional variable, input frequency. Prepositions occur, in German usage and French, with NP or V, they precede Adj, Det, N and/or NP. On the one hand, prepositions are similar to verbs, e.g. they can take NP objects, on the other hand, they differ from them as they do not take verbal complements or express tense. Unlike adverbs, prepositions, as part of prepositional phrases (subsequently PP), form a so-called closed class of semantically non-autonomous 1 , morphologically invariant function words expressing local, temporal, modal, and causal relations (cf. Döpke & Schwarze, 1981). Along with word order and morphological marking, learning to use prepositions is an important part of the child's grammatical development, as these function words are a major device for indicating syntactic relations between various sentence constituents (e.g. determining case in German). Slobin (1985a) also argues that, with regard to the Operating Principles 2 , a differentiation between content words and function words is essential to the construction of linguistic entities. Indeed, the child seems to classify part of his/her linguistic material quite early as belonging to functor classes.
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