Investigating Persian Locative Prepositions based on Cognitive Linguistics Approach (Case Study 'Between')

Abstract

Locative prepositions are one of the most important and widely used prepositional words of any language, which play an important role in representing human mental concepts in language. Basically, locative prepositions are one of the first prepositions that children produce in the process of learning their first language, and this is one of the most important reasons for the need to examine these letters cognitively. The aim of the present research is to investigate the polysemy of the locative preposition "between" in Persian language. To explain this polysemy, the principles of the school of cognitive linguistics and two theories of Principled Polysemy Tyler and Evans( 2001) and Image Schemas Johnson (1987) have been used. The research data were collected from the second edition of Hamshahri corpus and two dictionaries of Dehkhoda (1998) and Moien (2007). The results of the research show that the semantic network of the preposition "between" has one prototype spatial and four radial meanings. The prototype meaning of this preposition indicates the space between two things, and other meanings are placed radially around it and are expanded from it.

Keywords

• loactive prepositions
• polysemy
• cognitive linguistics
• semantics
• image schemas