Prepositional Polysemy – Radical or Moderate?

Abstract

This paper examines the linguistic phenomenon of prepositional polysemy, illustrated by two analyses of the English preposition over. Due to its complex meaning, over has been frequently studied within the framework of cognitive linguistics. Two approaches to prepo- sitional polysemy – a radical polysemy of prepositional meaning authored by Lakoff (1987) and a more moderate approach by Tyler and Evans (2003) are reviewed and compared in the paper. Given that both fall within cognitive linguistics studies, their fundamental assumptions are identical. Still, they significantly depart in the treat- ment of the proliferation of meaning. My paper aims at identifying and, subsequently, analyzing these differences. Following my review and comparison of these approaches, I reach the conclusion in support of a more moderate approach – the one which not only acknowledges contextual uses but also significantly reduces the number of distinct prepositional senses, stored in the semantic memory.