A Cognitive Semantic Approach to Teaching English Dependent Prepositions: MA Dissertation - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Prepositions have traditionally received scant attention in language teaching. Language learning materials have not generally focussed on more than a few core spatial senses. The numerous figurative uses have been considered arbitrary and learners have been expected to memorize them or acquire them incidentally. Recently, studies in the field of cognitive linguistics have begun to show that the different uses of prepositions may be more motivated than previously assumed. The present study considered whether the cognitive linguistic view that abstract preposition use is motivated by particular image schemas and conceptual metaphors could be used to account for dependent preposition combinations. Dependent prepositions were selected for study because they represent a frequent kind of preposition use and one which language learning materials explicitly describe as arbitrary. The study focussed on combinations where the preposition 'on' follows a particular noun, verb or adjective and uses of 'on' and 'in' with particular state concepts. It was found that far from being lexically empty, the prepositions in these combinations were potentially motivated in ways that corresponded to extant cognitive linguistic accounts. The study identifies the potential to explicitly teach dependent prepositions, using a cognitive linguistic approach, and discusses possible limitations on adopting such an approach.The author is a language teacher and teacher trainer, based in Switzerland. He has twenty years experience teaching English in East Asia, the Middle East and Switzerland and holds a diploma in TESOL and MA in Applied Linguistics.

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