The present study sets out to construct a semantic network for the German preposition hinter (‘behind’) based on the theoretical framework of “principled polysemy”. The analysis regarding the cognitive and pragmatic aspects motivating the meaning extensions of hinter attempts to highlight the importance of varying construal patterns and vantage points as well as the role of real-world knowledge. By means of corpus data, I intend to present six senses of the preposition hinter, hinting at the polysemous nature of prepositions more generally. Furthermore, the theory of conceptual metaphor is applied to account for metaphorical extensions of hinter to more abstract domains of embodied experience.

This article shows how cognitive grammar and cognitive linguistics theory offer a fruitful paradigm within which the process of second language acquisition can be examined. The aim is to describe and examine the benefit of using notions developed within the CG and CL frameworks to the study of crosslinguistic influence, especially conceptual transfer, in multilinguals. In recent years, the growth of empirical research concerning the contribution of cognitive-inspired theories to the study of second language acquisition and multilingualism has grown extensively. This article illustrates the possible contribution of CL to SLA by focusing on one particular line of inquiry: that of construal. Specifically, it examines how the notions developed within cognitive grammar theory can be useful tools for the analysis and comparison of conceptualization patterns of events, thus giving rise to transfer effects stemming from the way a person construes and conceptualizes events. The starting hypothesis is that conceptual transfer effects in the use of the target grammar, in this case the transfer effects in the TIME domain, may originate from the conceptualization patterns that the multilingual has acquired as a speaker of another L1. Previous transfer research has obtained evidence to suggest that patterns of L1 conceptualizations may be transferred into learners’ L2 through patterns that are similar to their L1. The utilization of central tools within cognitive grammar in order to unmask conceptual differences represents an important contribution to the state of the art of crosslinguistic influence research.

The present study aims to investigate the semantic value of the German spatial preposition jenseits (‘beyond’). It is argued that our conceptualization of the spatial-physical world and how we interact with objects in our environment transforms a prepositions’ primary meaning into domains of meaning that are tied to time or social interactions. While the study of the semantic structure of English prepositions has received attention, German prepositions, particularly less frequently used ones such as hinter (‘behind’) or jenseits, present a gap in research. It is attempted to show that the different senses of jenseits form a semantic network in which meaning extensions of the spatial, primary sense of jenseits are motivated by varying construal patterns imposed upon an observed scene. The description of the semantic structure of jenseits also draws on previous studies on its English counterpart, beyond (Boers, 1996; Lindstromberg, 2010). Based on the sample collected for the purpose of this study, this paper analyzes 1000 occurrences of the preposition jenseits in the DWDS-subcorpus Die Zeit. The analysis shows that a high frequency of the occurrences found in the sample constitute non-spatial meanings of jenseits and thus encode a configuration between objects in more abstract domains. Furthermore, the notion of metaphorical mapping is used to explain the conceptualization and metaphorical transfer of spatial jenseits to abstract domains of human experience.