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English «at»: An Integrated Semantic Analysis

by Iwona Kokorniak (Author)
©2007 Thesis 180 Pages

Summary

This book aims to provide a considerably detailed, integrated and methodologically grounded study of at within the cognitive framework. Assuming the non-arbitrary quality of the mental lexicon and highly creative nature of the human conceptual system, it is posited that each preposition has a primary sense which interacts with a highly constrained set of cognitive principles to derive a set of additional distinct senses, forming a motivated semantic network. The present analysis also reveals that at is remarkably coherent in its metaphoric and metonymic manifestations in that there exists a high degree of family resemblances between all the uses discussed in this study. Theoretical investigation is set against empirical data to offer support for the claim that both native and advanced foreign language speakers appear to possess a high awareness and intuition about the proper conceptualization of individual at-senses.

Details

Pages
180
Publication Year
2007
ISBN (Softcover)
9783631574522
Language
English
Keywords
Polysemy Englisch Präposition at Kognitive Semantik Prepositions Metonymy
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2007. 180 pp.

Biographical notes

Iwona Kokorniak (Author)

The Author: Iwona Kokorniak is a lecturer in the School of English at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (Poland). Her research interests focus on cognitive linguistics, cognitive semantics and contrastive analysis in particular. She has published several papers on prepositions in English and Polish.

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Title: English «at»: An Integrated Semantic Analysis