Towards Invariant Meanings Of Spatial Prepositions And Preverbs

This work presents the semantical analysis of the two spatial prepositions and associated prefixes, the French sur, sur-(on) and the Polish przez, prze-(across). We propose a theory of abstract places (loci), as a method of description which helps to build an invariant meanings of the two linguistics units. 1 Introduction Natural languages encode spatial and temporal representations in many various ways (deictics, prepositions, verbal lexicon and preverb). This article presents analyses of the two prepositions and associated preverbs, the French sur, sur-(on) and the Polish przez, prze-(across). We are particularly interested in the way the preposition and preverb determine a place. It is interesting to note that from a diacronical view point (Bally, Meillet, Witkowska-Gutkowska) spatial prepositions become preverbs. Two problems arise : Is the meaning of the preverb composed with the meaning of lexical predicate? Does the meaning of the preverb have a prepositional origin? It is however impossible to present in this short article the results of our analysis; we show only the methods by means of two mentioned examples. We note that the work on other prepositions and preverbs in French, Polish and Spanish are in progress. Many linguists (Benett, Culioli, Pottier, Talmy…) have recognized the necessity of quasi-topological analysis for studying space encoded by languages. However, it seems to us that the elementary topology as defined for mathematical analysis, does not capture exactly the linguistic problems in an adequated way. For instance, the idea of boundary as expressed by languages does not always refer to a point or limit. On the other hand, the understanding of a place cannot be reduced to the spatial notion. Indeed, from the cognitive point of view, natural languages use more abstract notion while referring to the place. Thus, we represent spatial place but also temporal and notional as, for instance, in Pottier's approach (Pottier:1992). We propose a theory of abstract places called "Abstract Loci Theory". This theory uses operators like in Kuratowski's algebra for elementary topology (Engelking: 1989). However, in this article, the operators of interiority, exteriority, closure and boundary are defined with new properties such that we obtain a "quasi-topological" structure: the interiority and exteriority operators are not idempotent and the interiority of the boundary is not always empty. We note respectively INT, EXT, FRO, FER, the new operators of interiority, exteriority, boundary and closure in this Abstract Loci Theory. We propose to give an informal approach to the …