Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Construction of prepositions'

Pagrindinis darbo tikslas – išnagrinėti dienraščio „Lietuvos rytas“ priede „Sostinė“ prielinksnių vartojimo ypatumus. Analizuojami įvairios tematikos straipsniai: politika, kultūra, menas, sportas, medicina, kriminalai ir pan. Tiriamąją medžiagą sudaro 2006 metų lapkričio mėnesio 10 dienraščio „Lietuvos rytas“ priedo „Sostinė“ numerių. Darbo metu ištirta 2534 prielinksnių. Analizuojant nagrinėjamą medžiagą, buvo keliami šie uždaviniai: a) remiantis „Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatikoje“, „Kalbos patarimuose“ pateiktu skirstymu, sugrupuoti dienraščio „Lietuvos rytas“ priedo „Sostinė“ prielinksnius pagal tai, su kuriais linksniais jie eina; b) nustatyti ir apibrėžti tiriamųjų prielinksnių reikšmes. Tyrimo rezultatai parodė, kad prielinksniai eidami su linksniu dažniausiai žymi sintaksinę objekto raišką, sintaksinę vietos raišką, sintaksinę krypties raišką, sintaksinę laiko raišką, rečiau – sintaksinę kiekio raišką, sintaksinę veiksmo ar būsenos priežasties raišką, sintaksinę informacijos ��altinio raišką, sintaksinę veiksmo atlikimo priemonės ar būdo raišką, sintaksinę išskirties santykių raišką ir labai retais atvejais – sintaksinę daikto požymių raišką, sintaksinę draugės raišką, sintaksinę medžiagos raišką, sintaksinę tikslo raišką, sintaksinę veikėjo būsenos požymio raišką, sintaksinę požymio raišką, sintaksinę tarpininkavimo raišką, sintaksinę veiksmo įrankio raišką, sintaksinę paskirties raišką.
The aim of the work is to analyze the prepositions found in appendix to daily newspaper „Lietuvos Rytas“ – „Sostinė“. In this work analyzes variety of themes in articles: politics, culture, art, sport, medicine, crime etc. Various dates were examined that is each week day was examined (it was chosen 2006 year November 10 issues). During the writing 2534 prepositions were analyzed. The main goals were: a) to group the prepositions according to „Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika“, „Kalbos patarimai“ proposed distinction by means of analyzing the cases they are found with; b) estimate and describe the meaning of examined prepositions. Main consideration was given to syntactic meaning of prepositional. The results showed that the most often used prepositions are prepositions with syntactic meaning of place, and less frequently found are those with the syntactic informational meaning, and the rarest prepositions found in articles are the prepositions of time, quantity and movement or condition. What is more the prepositions of object, aim, relation, material, tool or purpose are used in very rare cases.

The study adopts a construction grammar approach to examining the meaning of spatial prepositions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), critically examines traditional accounts of the semantic character and syntactic role of MSA prepositions and posits an alternative approach based on construction grammar theory and findings from interrogation of corpora. Arguments about the nature of prepositions and their role in meaning construction have long been afflicted by circularity and methodological opportunism. The theoretical premises of the study are crucially informed by the works of William Croft and Ronald Langacker on aspects of construction grammar; George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker and Leonard Talmy on grammatical theory and lexical categories; George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and others on conceptual metaphor; and Gilles Fauconnier and others on conceptual blending. The study attempts not just to address the limitations of formalist approaches, but also to develop a functionalist approach to the characterisation of MSA spatial prepositions, something largely unaddressed hitherto. The study incorporates extensive qualitative analysis and some quantitative data. It includes a critical discussion of lexically driven accounts of meaning, based on findings from this data, and posits a non-reductionist construction-based account. It addresses the distinction made between 'true' prepositions (^-*jj^ j^ 1 hurufal-jarr) and spatio-temporal contextualisers: 'conditions of place and time' (j^-j^j u^ 1 ^= zarfa al-makan wa-alzamari). It also includes comparative analysis of MSA and British English (BE), through the interrogation of a multi-genre translational corpus, to examine issues of languagespecificity in the category 'preposition'. The study suggests that MSA prepositions can be understood as a category only through taxanomic resemblances of a radial character, that their meaning is both construction- and language-specific and that they exhibit semantic diversity on a spectrum of schematicity, which is largely diachronic in formative character. The specificities of MSA prepositions cannot be adduced to universal syntactic categories and researchers need to eschew analysis framed by the categories of English or other 'reference' languages. The study finally suggests future areas of investigation.

One of the prominent questions in modern psycholinguistics is the relationship between the grammar and the parser. Within the approach of Generative Grammar, this issue has been investigated in terms of the role that Principles of Universal Grammar may play in language processing. The aim of this research experiment is to investigate this topic. Specifically, this experiment aims to test whether the Minimal Structure Principle (MSP) plays a role in the processing of Preposition-Stranding versus Pied-Piped Constructions. This investigation is made with a self-paced reading task, an on-line processing test that measures participants’ unconscious reaction to language stimuli. Monolingual English speakers’ reading times of sentences with Preposition-Stranding and Pied-Piped Constructions are compared. Results indicate that neither construction has greater processing costs, suggesting that factors other than the MSP are active during language processing.

Extract: [...] One of the often noted characteristic features of the Celtic languages is the absence of a singular verbal form with the meaning ‘to have’.1 The principal way of expressing possession is through periphrastic constructions with prepositions (such as Irish ag, Scottish Gaelic aig ‘at’; Welsh gan, Breton gant ‘at, with’) and appropriate forms of the substantive verb. Pronominal prepositions, another distinctive feature of the Celtic languages, consist of a preposition and a suffixed pronoun, or rather a pronominal personal ending. This construction may be analyzed as an instance of category fusion. Thus, the Irish and Welsh equivalents of English ‘I have money’ are Tá airgead agam or Mae arian gen i, respectively, both literally meaning ‘is money at-me/with-me’. This note discusses pronominal possessive constructions in Celtic languages (and some comparable examples from Celtic Englishes) and provides some background information on pronominal prepositions and comments on historical developments of these forms. It also discusses some terminological issues involved in labelling the construction in question. [...]

This thesis investigates the nature of optional preposition omission in L2 English extraction constructions known as null prepositions, e.g. *Who did you speak? (Klein, 1993b). Although null prepositions are found among learners with different LIs, their properties have not yet been fully understood, because many properties and possible sources have been left unexplored. To advance our understanding of null prepositions (and ultimately of L2 optionality), this study examined (a) null prepositions in different constructions (wh-questions, relative clauses, and passives), (b) the relation between null prepositions and the structure of L2 extraction constructions., ( c) the role of learners' LIs, and (d) task effects, by administering four experiments (an acceptability judgment task, an elicited imitation task, and two self-paced reading tasks) to French-speaking and Japanese-speaking learners of English as well as to native English controls. While the results of the four experiments corroborate the claim in existing studies that null prepositions are universal properties of the L2 grammars of learners from different LIs, it is also demonstrated that whether null prepositions are observed depends upon several factors such as the distinction between A- and A'-extractions, learners' Ll, and task differences. Specifically, the results of the four experiments consistently indicate that null prepositions in passives are particularly persistent for both L2 groups. By contrast, it is shown that null prepositions in wh-questions and relative clauses are subject to differences in learners' Ll and task. To explain these results, three sources for null prepositions are proposed: the difficulty in suppressing the Case feature from prepositions; covert pied-piping (Klein, 2001); influence from the syntax of Ll extraction constructions. It is also argued that these sources are not random but may be constrained by more general properties of L2 (null) prepositions: L2prepositions seem to be represented as Case markers without interpretative/semantic properties (Perpifian, 2010).

Bien que les travaux existants aient montré que les noms sans déterminant étaient particulièrement fréquents dans les syntagmes prépositionnels, les mécanismes régissant leur emploi dans les SP demeurent assez mal connus. Cette thèse présente les résultats d’une étude de corpus synchronique portant sur certains SP spatio-temporels sans déterminant de l’anglais et du français. Nous montrons que ces SP sont extrêmement hétérogènes sur le plan syntaxique, lexical, sémantique et pragmatique ; ils s’inscrivent sur un gradient allant d’expressions pleinement figées et opaques à des séquences transparentes, modifiables et productives. Nos données n’étayent pas l’hypothèse d’un phénomène unifié et strictement grammatical. Cependant, ces SP ne peuvent être simplement considérés comme une collection d’anomalies sans rapport les unes avec les autres ; certains d’entre eux appartiennent à des groupements productifs dans lesquels la syntaxe marquée va de pair avec un sens marqué. Les différences entre les SP anglais et français peuvent tenir soit à la productivité des groupements, soit à leurs caractéristiques sémantiques et/ou pragmatiques, qui reflètent la place et la saillance des noms sans déterminant dans les deux langues. Ce travail montre que l’application de l’analyse constructionnelle à ces SP éclaire leur intégration dans le système linguistique tout en permettant une typologie fine ; il suggère que des interactions plus importantes entre phraséologie et grammaire des constructions seraient particulièrement intéressantes pour l’étude des « moules » phraséologiques et des expressions polylexicales syntaxiquement marquées
Although previous research has shown that bare nouns are particularly frequent in prepositional phrases, the mechanisms underlying their use in PPs remain a relatively understudied topic. This thesis presents the results of a synchronic, corpus-based analysis of several groups of English and French spatio-temporal PPs. The case studies show that determinerless PPs are syntactically, lexically, semantically and pragmatically highly heterogeneous, ranging from fully fixed, opaque expressions to transparent, modifiable and productive sequences. The corpus data does not support the hypothesis of a unified, strictly grammatical phenomenon. However, these PPs cannot be explained away as a mere collection of unrelated anomalies; some of them cluster into productive sub-groupings in which marked syntax correlates with marked meaning. The differences between the French and English PPs can pertain either to the productivity of the groupings, or to their semantic and/or pragmatic properties. In the latter case, the contrasts reflect the place and salience of bare noun constructions in each language. The application of constructional analysis to the PPs is shown to be an illuminating way of accounting for their integration into the linguistic system whilst allowing for a fine-grained typology. This thesis argues that a greater interaction between phraseology and construction grammar would be of particular interest for the study of phraseological “patterns” and syntactically marked multi-word constructs

Cette thèse présente une réflexion sur les verbes à particule et les verbes prépositionnels en anglais. La relation qui existe entre la syntaxe et la sémantique est une des pierres angulaires de cette étude. Nous étudierons le rôle de la configuration syntaxique, de la structure argumentale et des connaissances extralinguistiques dans la construction du sens. Nous analyserons également le nombre d’arguments, tels qu’ils apparaissent dans une combinaison, ainsi que leur type sémantique en contexte et la manière dont ces deux paramètres peuvent influencer l’interprétation sémantique finale. Les aspects théoriques abordés sont la catégorisation des particules et des prépositions, l’interaction du sémantisme des particules - prépositions et le sémantisme verbal, la structure interne des verbes à particule, et les raisons pour lesquelles les particules peuvent apparaître soit avant, soit après le complément régi par le verbe. Nous aborderons également certaines questions plus générales telles que la conceptualisation du mouvement, la résultativité, la transitivité et la polysémie. Le travail a été effectué à partir d’un corpus de 286 combinaisons formées d’un élément verbal et over. Chaque combinaison est analysée en contexte afin d’identifier les facteurs qui influencent l’interprétation sémantique finale de la combinaison. Au cours de cette étude, nous identifierons toute une gamme de facteurs qui influencent l’interprétation sémantique finale des verbes à particule et des verbes prépositionnels anglais ainsi que leur interaction
This thesis explores the construction of sense in English particle and prepositional verbs. It departs from the premise that meaning is something constructed during the process of situated usage. A corpus of 286 combinations formed through the association of a verbal element with over are analysed in context in order to identify the various factors which influence final semantic interpretation. A particular focus of the study is the relationship between form and meaning. The relationship between syntactic configuration and semantic interpretation is investigated and the various ways in which the number and nature of the verbal and/or prepositional arguments can impact semantic interpretation is explored. The role of the extralinguistic in the construction of sense is examined. The major theoretical questions dealt with concern the categorisation of particles and prepositions, the interaction between particle/prepositional semantics and verbal semantics, the internal structure of particle verbs, and the reasons why the particle in a particle verb can either precede or follow the verbal object. The study also explores several more general areas of linguistic investigation including the conceptualisation of movement, resultativity, transitivity and polysemy. During the course of the study a wide range of factors which influence the final semantic interpretation of particle and prepositional verbs in English are identified

Le dialecte syrien de Tartous ne dispose pas d’adverbes dérivés d’un adjectif, comme c’est le cas en français, pouvant fonctionner comme adverbes de manière. Par contre,Les deux langues utilisent deux moyens similaires pour exprimer la manière. Le premier concerne la construction introduite par la préposition avec en français et parla préposition bə (‘associatif’) en syrien de Tartous, et le second, l’objet interne en français et l’objet dit absolu en syrien de Tartous. Compte tenu de la différence entre les systèmes linguistiques des deux langues, nous pourrons faire l’hypothèse que même dans les cas des deux moyens comparables dont disposent les deux langues pour exprimer la manière, ils ne sont pas soumis aux mêmes types de contraintes syntaxiques et sémantiques en français et en syrien de Tartous. Cette étude comparative nous permettra de comprendre le fonctionnement de chacun des moyens utilisés dans les deux langues pour exprimer la manière, et par là de faire ressortir les différences syntaxique et sémantique qui séparent les compléments de manière dans les deux langues
The Syrian dialect of Tartous does not have adverbs derived from adjectives that work as adverbs of manner, like in French. On the other hand, both languages use two similar ways of expressing condition ; the first one is construct introduced by thepreposition ‘with’ (‘avec’ in French, ‘bi’ in Syrian). The second way is the cognate object, or what is known in Syrian as ‘absolute effect’.With the differences between the two language systems in mind, we can assume that even if we have similar ways of expressing manner, yet they are controlled by different grammatical and semantic rules.Comparing the two languages allows us to understand the method of expressing manner in each language, and then identify the semantic and grammatical distinctions between the adverbs of manner in the two languages

La définition la plus commune de la préposition sur, y compris chez les linguistes, est qu'elle indique la position d'un sujet supérieur à un objet, comme, sur le plan spatial, dans La lampe est sur la table, et, sur le plan métaphorique, dans Les politiques influent sur le sort du peuple. Cependant cette approche rencontre de nombreuses difficultés : entre autres, on ne peut l'appliquer, sur le plan spatial, à : La petite fille leva les yeux sur son père ni, sur le plan temporel, à : Elle va sur ses vingt ans, ou encore, sur le plan métaphorique, à : Amr compte sur ses amis. Les définitions existantes de la préposition sur ne sont donc pas satisfaisantes. Notre thèse propose, dans sa première partie, une identité sémantique pour cette préposition, après une évaluation critique de ce que proposent les dictionnaires, grammaires de référence et divers travaux scientifiques qui lui sont consacrés. L'hypothèse est que le verbe sélectionne la préposition qui introduit son complément selon une affinité sémantique entre les deux – par exemple, si influer construit son complément avec sur, c'est qu'il y aurait un accord, une harmonie sémantique, entre influer et sur. Le second volet de la thèse met au point le corpus fiable et exhaustif qui permettra de tester l'hypothèse avancée dans les conditions les plus rigoureuses possibles, à savoir les verbes ne construisant leur complément qu'avec la préposition sur – ce qui suppose la caractérisation préalable de la notion de « complément ». Le troisième chapitre comporte une première partie vérifiant dans le corpus que la préposition sur a bien l'identité que lui confère notre hypothèse, ce qui est le cas à 100 % des énoncés testés. La seconde partie montre à 92 % que le verbe se construit avec une préposition avec laquelle il a une affinité de sens. L'hypothèse selon laquelle il y a harmonisation sémantique entre le verbe et sa préposition – en l'occurrence dans le cas du complément introduit par sur avec l'identité que nous lui avons attribuée – se trouve donc vérifiée
The most common definition of the preposition on, including among linguists, is that it indicates the position of a subject superior to an object, as, spatially, in La lampe est sur la table, and on the metaphorical plan, in Les politiques influent sur le sort du peuple. However, this approach encounters many difficulties : among other things, it can’t be applied spatially to : La petite fille leva les yeux sur son père or, temporally, at : Elle va sur ses vingt ans, or, on a metaphorical level, to : Amr compte sur ses amis. The existing definitions of the preposition on are therefore not satisfactory. Our thesis proposes, in its first part, a semantic identity for this preposition, after a critical evaluation of what the dictionaries, the reference of grammars and various scientific works dedicated to it offer. The hypothesis is that the verb selects the preposition which introduces its complement according to a semantic affinity between the two - for example, if influence builds its complement with on in French, it is that there would be an agreement, a semantic harmony, between to influence and on. The second part of the thesis develops the reliable and exhaustive corpus that will test the advanced hypothesis in the most rigorous conditions possible, namely verbs that build their complement with the preposition on - which assumes the prior characterization of the concept of "complement". The third chapter contains a first part verifying in the corpus that the preposition on has the identity conferred by our hypothesis, which is the case for 100% of the statements tested. The second part shows 92% that the verb is constructed with a preposition with which it has an affinity of meaning. The hypothesis that there is semantic harmonization between the verb and its preposition - in this case of the complement introduced by on with the identity that we attributed to it - is therefore verified

Dans cette thèse sur la concession en russe moderne, nous avons cerné cette notion en élaborant un schéma prototypique servant à classer différents types de constructions concessives et à intégrer le maximum de structures marquées comme concessives. Ainsi le schéma proposé (p, Cq), basé sur la notion de contraste entre les implications des contenus de p et q, les évaluations de ces contenus ou les actes illocutoires p et q, prend pour principal repère C, conjonction ou préposition concessive. Nous avons étudié la relation concessive dans des constructions bi-Propositives et des propositions simples. Cet ensemble est classé en fonction du statut épistémique de q, puis subdivisé en non-Conditionnel, conditionnel ou contrefactuel. Le deuxième critère de classement est le statut unique ou multiple de q. Dans le premier cas nous avons des constructions non-Généralisantes, dans le second la construction appartient au type généralisant. Nous nous sommes démarquée des recherches traditionnelles en prenant en compte la concession illocutoire : xotja sert à remettre en cause l’énoncé précédent pour une auto-Correction du locuteur qui annonce ainsi le changement du cours de sa pensée. Notre travail nous amène à la conclusion que la concession est un phénomène protéiforme non réductible à une notion de causalité inversée. L’élargissement du champ d’étude permet de jeter un pont entre la notion linguistique et la notion rhétorique de la concession et de donner un tableau plus complet des différentes formes de relation concessive en russe moderne
In this thesis dedicated to concession in modern Russian we specified the concept by means of a prototypical schema which we applied to classify different types of concessive constructions. This schema aims at embracing the majority of sentences marked as concessive. The main mark of the proposed schema (p, C q), based on the idea of contrast between the implications of p and q contents, assessments of these contents or p and q speech acts, is the connective C, a concessive conjunction or preposition. We studied concessive relations in both complex sentences and simple sentences. They are classified according to the epistemic status of q and subdivided into non-Conditional, conditional and counterfactual. The second criterion of classification is the single or multiple status of q. According to it we have, on the one hand, non-Generalized concessive constructions and, on the other, generalized concessive constructions. Outstepping the traditional research, we made a point of studying illocutionary concession as part of the whole. Indeed, xotja in discourse is used by the speaker as a self-Correction technique in order to reject the previous utterance pointing thus the deviation of their thought. As a result of our research we come to the conclusion that concession has multiple forms and cannot be reduced to inoperant causality. Due to a wider research scope we managed to bridge the linguistic and rhetoric concessions and to give a broader view of different forms of concessive relations in modern Russian

Notre objectif, dans cette etude, est de voir dans quelle mesure il est possible de batir des representations semantiques de sequences polylexicales de structure n1 a n2 designant des instruments. Nous nous fixons comme but d'elaborer ces constructions sans tenir compte ni du contexte d'apparition des sequences traitees, ni des particularites des sous-langages techniques auxquels elles appartiennent. Nous exploitons les instructions associees a la preposition + a ;, les relations entre forme et sens de certains noms morphosemantiquement lies a des verbes ainsi que des schemas evenementiels (suite actantielle ou non) adequats et ce, afin d'elaborer huit patrons de construction du sens pour les sequences nani. Afin d'exploiter au mieux ces patrons, nous associons a chaque mot simple une definition construite a partir d'extractions en enonces et constituee de proprietes extrinseques, specifiques ou non, et de quelques proprietes intrinseques, le tout exprimant notre maniere d'apprehender les objets du monde que les noms peuvent designer. Les structures definitionnelles contiennent des declarations de caracteristiques et de structures predicatives dont le nom defini est stereotypiquement argument. Elles s'integrent dans une hierarchie de types (chaque nom pouvant heriter de plusieurs types pour mettre en exergue ses differentes facettes : sa constitution, ses fonctionnalites, son origine). Les precedents patrons interpretatifs sont repris sous forme de regles aux strictes conditions d'application : selections d'argument en fonction de leur typage ou d'une forme morphologique remarquable. Elles traduisent significativement que chaque nom contribue a la construction du sens de la sequence integree et influence le sens des autres elements constitutifs. Les resultats obtenus legitiment le fait de considerer que le sens de denominations complexes de structures n1 a n2 peut compositionnellement etre reconstruit sans necessairement considerer d'indices externes a la sequence
Our aim in this study is to see whether it is possible to build semantic representations of n1 a n2 poly lexical sequences referring to instruments. These representations are built without us taking into account the context in which the sequences appear or the specificities of the technical sub, languages they belong to. We use the instructions associated to the preposition a, the meaning-form relations of nouns which are morphosemantically linked to verbs, and the appropriate event schemas, all this in order to construct eight meaning-constructing patterns for the sequences nani. To every simple word is associated a definition based on extractions from utterances and expressing extrinsic properties, whether specific or not, and a few intrinsic properties ; this reflects our way of grasping the objects in the world that nouns can designate. The definitions contain characteristics and informations on the predicative structure of which the noun is a stereotype argument, in a declarative form. They are integrated in a type hierarchy (each noun can inherit from several types, its different aspects - functionalities, origin, constitution - being thus emphasized). The above mentioned patterns are taken up again as rules with strict application conditions : selection of arguments according to their type or to the selection of a particular morphological form. These rules show that every noun contributes to the bulding of the meaning of the integrated sequence and influences the meaning of the other elements of the sequence. The results show that it is legitimate to consider that the meaning of complex n1 a n2 denominations can be reconstructed compositionnally without necessarily considering elements which are external to the sequence

Argument marking prepositions in German are part of more complex structures referred to here as verb-preposition combinations (verb-PPs), e.g. warten auf ('to wait for') and pochen auf ('to insist on'). The preposition auf ('on') attaches to a wide range of verbs to form such combinations in which auf encodes different semantic relations that elude concrete description. Nevertheless, previous research in valency theory and related approaches could identify patterns in the distribution of verb-PP[subscript 'auf'] combinations (Eroms 1981, 1991, Lerot 1982, Bouillon 1984, Domínguez Vázquez 2005), based on perceived similarities in the meaning of the governing verbs. Cognitive linguistics provides insights into seemingly opaque senses of prepositions by analyzing them as motivated by metaphorical meaning extension (Brugman 1988, Lakoff 1987, Meex 2001, Liamkina 2007). Finally, generative approaches scrutinize the semantic relationships between verbs and their PP-arguments and systematize them under the concept of semantic roles (Fillmore 1968, Rauh 1993). However, none of these approaches can fully account for the distribution of verb-PPauf combinations in German. This dissertation proposes a novel approach towards identifying and analyzing the distributional patterns of verb-PP[subscript 'auf'] combinations by applying insights from Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982, 1985) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006). Goldberg's theory of argument structure constructions already served as a model for analyzing auf as a partially schematic argument structure construction encoding the meaning 'future orientation/future event' (Rostila 2007). Based on a large amount of corpus data, I show that such generalizing accounts are better arrived at by employing a usage-based bottom-up approach to verb-PP[subscript 'auf'] combinations. I argue that the detailed semantic and syntactic information provided by the lexical database FrameNet for each lexical unit can be used to identify distributional patterns and to describe them in detail. Furthermore, I argue that integrating the verb-PP[subscript 'auf'] combinations and the frames they evoke into a hierarchical lexical-constructional network allows us to discover substantiated generalizations about these combinations while at the same time preserving the description of their idiosyncratic features.
text

In this dissertation I examine first how the dynamicity of prepositions and the meaning of verbs interact in English motion constructions, and second what role the constructions themselves play in this interaction. I adopt a Construction Grammar perspective, which assumes that constructions can contribute to the interpretation of utterances. Based on an extensive corpus study and additional evidence from a survey on acceptability judgments, I investigate the limits of the semantic import of constructions with respect to the expression of PATH. To that end, I determine the degree of dynamicity of 19 prepositions on the basis of their frequency of occurrence in static versus dynamic utterance types. This degree of dynamicity measures a preposition's contribution to the semantics of utterances instantiating the Caused-Motion Construction (CMC) or the Intransitive-Motion Construction (IMC) with respect to the predication of a dynamic PATH. I show that a dynamic PATH needs to be lexically expressed in motion constructions, either by the preposition or by the verb, if it is not retrievable through contextual factors. This has direct repercussions for the use of prepositions in the two constructions. I show that coercion of non-dynamic prepositions into a dynamic interpretation is only possible if both the verb and the preposition inherently profile the endpoint. The power of constructions to coerce the meanings of lexical items, i.e. to influence the canonical interpretation of these items where they do not correspond to the construction's semantics, is thus much more restricted than commonly assumed. I also show that constructions are limited with respect to the number of lexical items that they can coerce in a given instantiation. The CMC and the IMC can either coerce a non-motion verb or a non-dynamic preposition, but the combination of non-motion verbs with non-dynamic prepositions yields utterances that no longer express a directional PATH. Overall, this thesis illustrates that it is indispensable to consider the lexical semantics of the instantiating verbs and their co-occurrence restrictions with specific prepositions, even when examining the workings of more abstract linguistic units such as constructions.

Prepositional usage in spatial constructions in the Slavic languages is frequently unpredictable and perplexing to the non-native speaker. This is especially true in the case of the preposition na. By examining categories of spatial phenomena with which the preposition na is used, it is possible to better understand why na is used in many circumstances. This not only has implications for language pedagogy, but promises to aid the understanding of certain aspects of diachronic change in the semantics of the prepositional systems of the Slavic languages.

Spanish, as a V(erb)-framed language (Talmy 1985), is expected to lexicalize the path of motion in the verb and manner in some satellite when it comes to the description of motion events. Nonetheless, it shows mixed properties (e.g. Aske 1989, Berman & Slobin 1994). All manner of motion verbs can take a path satellite introduced by the prepositions "hacia" and "hasta", and yet only some can take a path satellite introduced by the preposition "a." I claim that goal XPs introduced by "hasta" and "hacia" are adjuncts, whereas "a" is an argument marker. In order to capture the intermediacy of a verb’s ability to take a goal XP, I classify manner of motion verbs according to a three-way distinction that takes into account whether they encode path categorically, overwhelmingly, or only sometimes, and whether they lexically reject the notion of a goal. Finally, I posit verb coercion—under certain semantic and pragmatic conditions—of manner of motion verbs that strongly or categorically favor displacement in order to express a goal. These semantic/pragmatic influential factors are reduced to (i) degree of manner and (ii) degree of goal-orientedness.
text