Meaning Of Prepositions Research Articles

Le Tavole Iguvine By Aldo ProsdociMi (review)

BOOK NOTICES 717 It is well known that most sentences, alongside their 'prepositional meaning', have, when uttered, a certain illocutionary force. It may be less obvious that all sentences, when uttered, contain an 'epistemic meaning'—which reflects , among other things, the speaker's attitude toward the propositional meaning: it is impossible for a human being to talk without taking a position concerning the truth of the communicated message. Doherty assumes that epistemic meaning is expressed partly by the elements which are used to render the propositional meaning, and partly by other elements. The latter group includes two basic categories: (a) sentential adverbs and the positive or negative form of an utterance specify attitudes, while (b) the syntactic, lexical , and phonological forms of statements, questions, and clauses specify attitudinal moods. Some expressions mark both attitude and attitudinal mood, e.g. the so-called German 'Einstellungspartikeln'; and D's study concentrates on the epistemic meaning conveyed by the particles doch, etwa, denn, ja, and wohl. Only in the past few years have German scholars become increasingly aware of the importance of particles in their language. This might sound a little surprising. The abundant use of particles is one of the most salient features of German and Dutch, as opposed to English . A few decades ago, A. Reichling drew attention to the importance of particles in Dutch. His work, however, has not been translated into English, and has never obtained the success it deserves. D's book includes 24 chapters, in three main parts. Chs. 1-10 deal with the basic elements required for the description ofthe particles studied . The description proper occupies Chs. 1118 . The remaining chapters explore some ofthe relevant epistemic contexts for 'Einstellungspartikeln '. D argues that each particle has a single invariant meaning, which is then differentiated in terms of context. This is a highly attractive view: new evidence is offered, however indirectly, for the assumption that the entire lexicon (and notjust categories like nouns, adjectives, and verbs) is articulated in so-called semantic or lexical fields. In the early 40's, a similar assumption was put forward by K. Reuning , whose work too is little known, although it was written in English. The original text, a 1981 Berlin dissertation from the Humboldt-Universität, has been thoroughly revised, but no effort has been made to update the bibliography. This is unfortunate, since recent attempts to approach the study of particles in terms of 'lexical fields' are not considered (cf. H. Weydt's 'Partikelanalyse und Wortfeldmethode: Doch, immerhin, jedenfalls, schließlich, wenigstens', published in a volume edited by Weydt: Die Partikeln der deutschen Sprache, 395-413, 1979). D's original contribution to the study of German particles is a highly interesting work. It will, if one believes D, 'meet with opposition as it trespasses into semantic areas which have, so far, been excluded from all logically stricter models' (160). But is that not a guarantee for the progress of linguistics as a whole? It is to be hoped that D's apprehension will become true! [Bert Peeters, Aarschot, Belgium.] Le Tavole Iguvine. By Aldo ProsdociMi . (Lingue e iscrizioni delPItalia antica, 4.) Firenze: Olschki, 1984. Pp. 239, with a separate album of photos. The Iguvine Tables are among the most important ritual resources of the classical world. Discovered in 1444 at Gubbio in north central Italy, the seven bronze tablets are preserved there in the Palazzo dei Consoli. They represent the most significant extant monuments of Umbrian. Since many editions of the Tables exist, one might ask why Prosdocimi has undertaken the task of producing yet another. The answer is apparent when P's stunningly clear and detailed account is viewed in comparison with earlier modern editions such as those by G. Devoto, G. Bottiglioni, and J. Poultney, as well as older ones by such scholars as M. Bréal, R. S. Conway , C. D. Buck, and R. von Planta. The special feature of P's account among modern editions lies primarily in the fact that it does not attempt to be a grammar of Umbrian based on the Tables : rather, it is a historical/epigraphical/philological treatise, full ofdetailed discussion of the physical characteristics of the Tables and their interpretation...

Reasoning about scene descriptions

When a scene is described by means of natural language sentences, many details are usually omitted, because they are not in the focus of the conversation. Moreover, natural language is not the best tool to define precisely positions and spatial relationships. The process of interpreting ambiguous statements and inferring missing details involves many types of knowledge, from linguistics to physics. This paper is mainly concerned with the problem of modeling the process of understanding descriptions of static scenes. The specific topics covered by this work are the analysis of the meaning of spatial prepositions, the problem of the reference system and dimensionality, the activation of expectations about unmentioned objects, the role of default knowledge about object positions and its integration with contextual information sources, and the problem of space representation. The issue of understanding dynamic scenes descriptions is briefly approached in the last section.

Semantics and pragmatics of locative expressions

The paper examines locative expressions and shows that an adequate account of their meaning must be based on two essential understandings: First, the simple spatial relation, often given as the meaning of the spatial prepositions, is only an “ideal” from which there are deviations in context; second, a level of “geometric conceptualization” mediates between “the world as it is” and language. Pragmatic “near principles” are formulated to explain some deviations from the ideal and several other apparent irregularities of prepositional use. A set of “use types” of the ideal meaning is proposed to account for conventional aspects of locative meaning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this description of locative expressions for artificial intelligence and linguistics.

On the use and meaning of prepositions

This study explored the relationship between the use and meaning of 33 prepositions. The S s composed sentences for each preposition and then found sensible substitutes for the preppositions; other S s gave free associations to each preposition; and other S s grouped the repositions according to their meaning. Patterns of prepositional similarity, derived for the three procedures, showed that prepositions with overlapping substitutes generally had overlapping contexts in sentences, had overlapping free associations, and frequently belonged to the same groups. Free associations were most often the substitutes of a preposition and next most often nominals differing from, but having common properties with, its objects in sentences. The results implied: (a) that a S treats two prepositions as being semantically related to the extent that they are interchangeable in sentences; and (b) that a S implicitly uses hierarchical phrase structure rules and cognitive categories corresponding to prepositional and noun phrases when he gives free associations and when he makes judgments about meaning.

On teaching verb constructions with prepositions k and y at Lithuanian schools

The article analyses Russian verb constructions with prepositions к and у and their equivalents in the Lithuanian language. Such verb constructions often constitute difficulties to Lithuanians learning the Russian language.
 Not knowing the exact meaning and usage of Russian prepositions, Lithuanian users often tend to replace Russian verb constructions with preposition к and by relevant constructions in their mother tongue, thus making rather many syntactic mistakes.
 The article analyzes the Russian verb constructions with prepositions к and у, expressing a variety of semantic relations and their parallel equivalents in Lithuanian are provided. Lithuanian constructions of such type can have either prepositional or non-prepositional form; on the other hand, the Russian preposition к has even several equivalents in the Lithuanian language (prie, pas, į), and the preposition y is also translated to Lithuanian in several ways (prie, pas, iš, etc.).
 The article simultaneously reviews two parallels of these constructions in the Lithuanian and Russian languages, namely: Russian verb constructions with prepositions к and у and Lithuanian constructions with prepositions prie and pas, expressing spatial and object-spatial relations.
 At the end, the article presents various exercises concerning verb agreement in the Russian and Lithuanian languages so that the learners can practice the correct usage of the mentioned verb constructions in Russian.