ON THE SEMANTIC NETWORK OF PREPOSITIONS: THE PROTOTYPICAL MEANINGS AND EXTENDED SENSES OF by AND over
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Abstract
English prepositions are widely acknowledged to be highly polysemous. They exhibit a range of spatial, temporal, and abstract meanings. While cognitive-semantic accounts commonly assume that these meanings arise through metaphorical or experiential extension from a prototypical (literal) spatial sense, the extent to which such extensions are constrained remains underexplored. This paper examines the semantic (lexical) networks of the English prepositions by and over in order to further investigate how their prototypical spatial meanings systematically extend into temporal and abstract domains. Drawing on a qualitative, corpus-informed methodology the study analyses selected concordance examples drawn from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) alongside learner-oriented corpus tools, supported by dictionary-based evidence. The analysis demonstrates that the polysemy of by and over does not result from unrestricted sense proliferation,but is instead governed by identifiable cognitive and constructional constraints, including spatial configuration, Figure–Ground relations, and selectional compatibility within specific constructions. The findings suggest that semantic extension in English prepositions follows structured and predictable patterns, revealing an internally organized network of related senses rather than an unstructured collection of meanings. By highlighting these constraints, the paper contributes to constraint-based models of prepositional polysemy and offers implications for both semantic theory and the description of English prepositions.
