Embodied motivations for abstract in and on constructions

• This chapter investigates the relationship between abstract in and on constructions (i.e. grammatical form and meaning pairings (cf. Langacker 1987: 409; Goldberg 2005: 3) and body-world knowledge. Abstract in and on instances retrieved from the British National Corpus (BNC) are analyzed to identify what types of abstract concepts are construed as containing entities (used with the English preposition/particle in) and what types of abstract concepts are construed as objects/supporting surfaces (used with the preposition/particle on). Analyses show that abstract in and on constructions fall into families of constructions that refer to related concepts, and that these, in turn, are connected with specific types of embodied experiences. Body-world knowledge thus provides a principled way of explaining the constructions.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

abstract concepts

prepositions

particles

body-world knowledge

English

language studies

språkvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)