The Semantics of English Prepositions

School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences University of Sussex
Linguists, psychologists and philosophers have long observed the importance of space and spatial experience for both language and thought. In this book, we examine the nature of human spatio-physical experience and how human conceptualization of spatial relations is reflected in the English language. In particular, we are interested in how spatial concepts are systematically extended to provide a wide array of non-spatial meanings. We do so through a study of English spatial particles, an important subset of which are prepositions