Languages frequently make use of spatial vocabulary to describe abstract notions. For instance, the spatial preposition by (‘by the house’) can also describe relations in the temporal and causal... Show moreLanguages frequently make use of spatial vocabulary to describe abstract notions. For instance, the spatial preposition by (‘by the house’) can also describe relations in the temporal and causal domain (‘by Monday’; ‘hit by John’). This dissertation shows that when a spatial term is extended into an abstract domain, some of its spatial meaning persists. Speakers rely on a spatial representation of the abstract domain, which they use to reinterpret the spatial term to obtain an abstract meaning. On the basis of Western European languages, the proposal is formalized for causal prepositions (e.g., French ‘de’ and ‘par’ in passives) as well as demonstratives referring to information content (e.g., the use of English ‘that’ to introduce complement clauses). The proposals are further tested in corpus studies using Biblical Hebrew. Data from the Hebrew Bible additionally show that the analysis can be extended to the use of prepositions for describing social relations. This research shows that spatial meaning often persists when grammaticalization takes place. Use of spatial vocabulary in abstract domains is not metaphorical but deeply embedded in cognition, shaping the conceptualization of abstract relations. In this way, the study of language contributes to our understanding of the human mind. Show less
The term ‘meaning’, as it is presently employed in Linguistics, is a polysemous concept, covering a broad range of operational definitions. Focussing on two of these definitions, meaning as ... Show moreThe term ‘meaning’, as it is presently employed in Linguistics, is a polysemous concept, covering a broad range of operational definitions. Focussing on two of these definitions, meaning as ‘concept’ and meaning as ‘context’ (also known as ‘distributional semantics’), this paper explores to what extent these operational definitions lead to converging conclusions regarding the number and nature of distinct senses a polysemous form covers. More specifically, it investigates whether the sense network that emerges from the principled polysemy model of over as proposed by Tyler & Evans (2003; 2001) can be reconstructed by the neural language model BERT. The study assesses whether the contextual information encoded in BERT embeddings can be employed to succesfully (i) recognize the abstract sense categories and (ii) replicate the relative distances between the senses of over proposed in the principled polysemy model. The results suggest that, while there is partial convergence, the two models ultimately lead to different global abstractions because the imagistic information that plays a key role in conceptual approaches to prepositional meaning may not be encoded in contextualized word embeddings. Show less
This article is concerned with the use and meaning of ten different prepositions attested in the corpus of Dadanitic inscriptions. Compared with previous overviews of the prepositional system, the... Show moreThis article is concerned with the use and meaning of ten different prepositions attested in the corpus of Dadanitic inscriptions. Compared with previous overviews of the prepositional system, the article provides a more complete picture of the various semantic functions exhibited by these prepositions. It also discusses the impact of formulaic language on the semantic scope of individual preposition as well as instances where different prepositions have the same semantic function. It also compares the use of these prepositions with cognates in other ancient North-Arabian corpora. In addition to this, it contains some new interpretations and translations. Show less
