COLLOCATION AND PREPOSITION SENSE: A PHRASEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE COGNITION OF POLYSEMY by YOSHIHITO KAMAKURA A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English School of English, Drama and American Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham February 2011 ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship between the ‘sense’ of the prepositions over, into and through and the combined ‘form’ of their preceding and following nouns, using the hypothesis that the co-occurring nouns can predict different senses of the prepositions. It uses concepts drawn from both corpus linguistics and cognitive linguistics, in particular drawing on theories of phraseology formulated by Sinclair and others and on theories of preposition meaning formulated by Langacker and Taylor. 1,366 instances of the use of the prepositions from the ICE-GB corpus were examined. The results indicate a relationship between the senses of prepositions and their co-occurring nouns together with some features of their linguistic behaviour. Over, into and through have similar patterns when their trajector and landmark are combined. The thesis draws on statistical information regarding Human, Concrete object and Abstract object classifications to explore the distribution of sense of over. It uses equivalent information relating to into and through to reinforce and amend the semantic networks for these prepositions proposed by Lakoff and by Tyler and Evans. DEDICATION To Fusako and Kent ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I came alone to the university and found a high-rise clock tower that psychologically overpowered me. I was fearful about earning a degree at a foreign country. My wife came to Birmingham three months afterwards and our life in pursuit of the PhD degree started. With a deep sense of gratitude, I want to express my sincere thanks to my supervisors. Professor Susan Hunston has offered immense help and valuable suggestions. Every time we have met, for five years, I have enjoyed her cheerful supervision. Without her help, I could never have reached this stage. My sincere thanks are due to Dr. Jeannette Littlemore for offering clear advice, encouragement and guidance in the course of writing this thesis. I am also grateful to Dr. Eve Richards for offering clear advice about my academic writing any weekend when I asked for proofreading. I owe particular thanks to Ken and Liz Pheysey for their tremendous help and great generosity in treating my wife and me as part of their family. Finally, my greatest gratitude always goes to my dearest wife, Fusako. I would like to thank her for her constant care, especially for making a lunch box for me every day that I studied at the university. Without her loving support, I would never have completed my present work. My son, Kent, was born in England in August last year. I arrived here on my own and then Fusako came. Now, three of us are going back to my home country, Japan, with the title of PhD. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7 2.1 Categorization 7 2.2 Prototype and semantic network. 12 2.2.1 Prototype 12 2.2.2 Semantic network 19 2.2.3 Trajector and landmark 23 2.3 Embodiment and image schema 28 2.4 Metonymy and metaphor 38 2.5 Phraseology 50 2.6 Lexical priming 53 2.7 Approaches of corpus linguistics to prepositions 58 2.8 Meaning and lexical representation 63 2.8.1 Lexical representation and semantic composition 64 2.8.2 LCCM Theory concerning polysemy 67 2.9 Summary of the chapter 69 Chapter 3 DATA AND METHODOLOGY 71 3.1 Corpus data 72 3.2 HCA classification. 74 3.2.1 Experiment on the HCA classification. 76 3.2.2 Metaphorical extension of the HCA combinations 80 3.3 Prototypicality of the senses of prepositions 84 3.3 Summary of the chapter 87 Chapter 4 PILOT STUDY: TR AND LM COMBINATIONS IN SEVEN PREPOSITIONS 89 4.1 Chi-square test of the distribution of HCA combinations 90 4.2 Cluster dendrogram and analysis of the clustering 94 4.3 Summary of the chapter 99 Chapter 5 THE MEANING COMPONENTS OF OVER 101 5.1 The polysemy and semantic network of over 101 5.2 The case studies of over 103 5.2.1 The central schema of over. 103 5.2.2. Motivations behind the semantic network 107 5.2.3. Sentential components of senses of over 109 5.3 Corpus research on the guiding senses of over 111 5.3.1 Overview of the distribution of senses 113 5.3.2 Sense and the sentential components in the corpus 115 5.3.3 Implications about the analysis of the over senses in the semantic network 157 5.4 TR and LM combination 164 5.4.1 Distribution of TR and LM combination 164 5.4.2 Overused and underused combinations of TR and LM 168 5.4.2.1 Overused CC combination 169 5.4.2.2 Overused AA combination 172 5.4.2.3 Underused CA and AC combination 175 5.4.3 Embodied and figurative senses with the TR of human being 177 5.5 Summary of the chapter 179 Chapter 6 ANALYSIS OF INTO 181 6.1 Distribution of HCA 183 6.2 Central and derived senses of into 187 6.2.1 Mental representation of the central sense of into 187 6.2.2 Trajector and landmark of into 191 6.2.3 Derived senses of into 193 6.3 HCA classification of into 198 6.3.1 CC combination and the central sense of into 198 6.3.2 HC and CH combination 203 6.3.3 HH combination 207 6.3.4 HA combination 210 6.3.5 AH, CA and AC combination 215 6.3.6 AA combination 217 6.4 Implications of the HCA combination analysis 221 6.5 Summary of the chapter 228 Chapter 7 ANALYSIS OF THROUGH 229 7.1 Distribution of HCA 230 7.2 Central and derived senses of through 236 7.2.1 Mental representation of the central sense of through 236 7.2.2 Derived senses of through 239 7.3 HCA classification of through 242 7.3.1 CC and HC combinations and the central sense of through 243 7.3.2 CH and HH combinations 255 7.3.3 HA combination 258 7.3.4 AH, CA and AC combinations 264 7.3.5 AA combination 266 7.4 Implications of the HCA combination analysis 268 7.5 Summary of the chapter 274 Chapter 8 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 275 8.1 HCA combinations and the senses of the preposition 276 8.2 The HCA combinations and semantic network 286 8.3 Metaphor in the semantic network 294 8.4 Applications of the results and limitations 301 8.5 Conclusion and future work 307 APPENDICES 310 REFERENCES 416 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Enquiries and questionnaire concerning classification (Chapter 3) 310 Human (animate), concrete object and abstract object classification enquiries 311 Questionnaire of senses of preposition 313 Appendix 2: Statistics of the Pilot Study (Chapter 4) 314 3x3 distribution of HCA combination of seven prepositions 315 Appendix 3: HCA classification and the senses of over of the ICE GB data (Chapter 5) 316 Concordance lines of verb + over 317 Concordance lines of verb + noun phrase + over 326 Proto-scene (1) 329 On-the-other-side-of (2A) 330 Above-and-beyond (Excess I) (2B) and Completion (2C) 334 Transfer (2D) 335 Temporal (2E) 336 Covering (3) 339 Examining (4) 341 Focus-of-attention (4A) 342 More (5A) and Over-and-above (Excess II) (5.A.1) 344 Control (5B) and Preference (5C) 345 Reflexive (6) and Repetition (6A) 347 Appendix 4: HCA classification and the senses of into of the ICE GB data (Chapter 6) 348 Concordance lines of verb + into 349 Concordance lines of verb + noun phrase + into 364 CC combination 367 HC combination 371 HH combination 375 HA combination 376 CA combination 382 AC combination 383 AA combination 384 Appendix 5: HCA classification and the senses of through of the ICE GB data (Chapter 7) 390 Concordance lines of verb + through 391 Concordance lines of verb + noun phrase + through 400 CC combination 402 HC combination 404 CH combination 406 HH combination 407 HA combination 408 AH combination 411 CA combination 412 AC combination 413 AA combination 414 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Semantic category of BIRD 9 Figure 2.2 Family resemblance 10 Figure 2.3 Mental representations of in, on, at 13 Figure 2.4 Mental representations of ‘Jump over the box’ and ‘The plane flew over the town’ 18 Figure 2.5 Idealised semantic network with radial category 20 Figure 2.6 Semantic network of over by Lakoff 21 Figure 2.7 Semantic network of over by Tyler and Evans 23 Figure 2.8 Rubin’s vase 24 Figure 2.9 Trajector and landmark 25 Figure 2.10 Trajector and landmark of through 27 Figure 2.11 Pear in the bowl 31 Figure 2.12 Distribution patterns of the dependence sense of on 35 Figure 2.13 Distribution patterns of the locative and dependence senses of on 36 Figure 2.14 Mapping from the source domain to the target domain 40 Figure 2.15 The moving time model 47 Figure 2.16 The moving ego model 48 Figure 2.17 The semantic network for over 49 Figure 2.18 Semantic associations of collocation with preposition 63 Figure 2.19 Architecture of LCCM Theory 65 Figure 4.1 Dendrogram of the residuals of HCA combinations 94 Figure 4.2 HCA distribution patterns in the trajector-centred order 97 Figure 4.3 HCA distribution patterns in the landmark-centred order 98 Figure 5.1 The central schema of over, adapted from Lakoff 104 Figure 5.2 The central schema of over, adapted from Dewell 105 Figure 5.3 The proto scene of over 106 Figure 5.4 Configuration of an on-line meaning as in The hummingbird hovered over the flower 109 Figure 5.5 Component, relational, and integrative schema 110 Figure 5.6 The semantic network for over 112 Figure 5.7 The mental representation of (15) and (16) 118 Figure 5.8 The mental representation of (17) and (18) 119 Figure 5.9 The cat jumped over the wall 122 Figure 5.10 Geometric transition of covering sense, partly adapted from Lakoff 135 Figure 5.11 The mental representation of more sense 143