On nouns functioning as prepositions

Južnoslovenski Filolog

关键词: nouns;    prepositions;    prepositionalization;    grammaticalization;    grammatical polysemy;    semantics;    Serbian language;   

DOI  :  10.2298/JFI1268091D

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper analyzes semantic transformations of nouns functioning asprepositions. The semantic characteristics of prepositions are discussed, andBelic’ concept of adverbial origin and meaning of prepositions is reviewed.Contrary to usual perception that prepositions have mere grammatical meaning,it is concluded in this paper that they also have lexical meaning, likeadverbs. Cognitive linguistics has so far dealt with lexical meanings ofprepositions, and it is up to contemporary semantics to further explore andevolve this approach. Based on this fact that prepositions have lexicalmeaning, it is argued that nouns functioning as prepositions retain thatlexical attribute though with different semantic value, rather than it adoptsgrammatical characteristics. It is concluded that semantic meaning of thosenouns used as prepositions could be broken into two segments: adverbial(place) and nominal (partitive). The nouns which upon occasions may functionas prepositions in Serbian language as a rule denote place and they alwaysare used with genitive case (mostly partitive), and as a consequence theyoften have partitive meaning. In the sentences with nouns functioning asprepositions, the act expressed encompasses the part of the localizator or itis performed on its bounds, or near it. Which meaning would prevail dependson the noun, or verb, or noun in genitive case. A noun and its relatedpreposition are treated as two lexemes in Serbian descriptive dictionaries,independent but close in meanings, since the preposition originated from anoun in a process defined by Irena Grickat as grammar polysemy, i.e. apolysemy with the grammatical result. In some grammar books identical formsof a preposition and nominative and accusative noun forms are defined ashomophoria, and those prepositions and nouns are called homophores. Sincehomophoria is a type of homonymy, and homonymy excludes semantic relationbetween lexemes, the term homophoria had to be discarded. It is suggested inthis paper that only few nouns in Serbian language can function asprepositions due to fact that only those few have possibility to combinesemantically high-productive spaciality with partitivity (rarelypossessiveness), as a result of their obligatory usage with partitive(sometimes, possessive) genitive. The usage of nouns as prepositions inSerbian language is slowly going out because their semantics is imprecise,and in certain circumstances difficult to differentiate, which means that theprocess of transformation of nouns into prepositions was not complete. Thus,more frequent today are compound prepositions formed by a real prepositionand a noun (navrh, uvrh, podno). Their semantics is more distinctive and moreprecise due to real preposition as constituents. [Projekat Ministarstva naukeRepublike Srbije, br. 178021: Opis i standardizacija savremenog srpskogjezika]

【 授权许可】

Unknown