VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ VÂN KHÁNH A STUDY ON MEANINGS OF THE ENGLISH PREPOSITION
“IN” AND ITS VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS FROM A
COGNITIVE SEMANTIC PERSPECTIVE

(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC NGHĨA CỦA GIỚI TỪ “IN” TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ
CÁC NGHĨA TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT DƯỚI GÓC ĐỘ NGỮ
NGHĨA HỌC TRI NHẬN)
M.A. Minor Thesis Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
HANOI - 2009

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration …………………………………………………………………………
i
Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………
ii
Abstract …………………………………………………………………………….
iii
Abbreviations and Symbols ………………………………………………………
iv
Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………
v
INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………….
1
1. Statement of the Problem ………………………………………………
1
2. Aims of the Study …………………………………………………………
3
3. Scope of the Study ………………………………………………………….
3
4. Significance of the Study …………………………………………………
3
5. Research Questions ………………………………………………………
4
6. Design of the Study ………………………………………………………

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2.1. Research Questions …………………………………………………
16
2.2. Methodology ……………………………………………………………
16

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2.3. Data ………………………………………………………………………
17
2.4. Analytical Framework ……………………………………………………
18
2.5. Data Analysis, Findings and Discussion …………………………………
19
2.5.1. Meanings of the English Preposition “in” …………………………
19
2.5.1.1. Prototypical Schema for “in”…………………………………
19
2.5.1.2. Non-prototypical Meanings of ‘in’…………………………….
20
2.5.1.3. Metaphorical Extensions ………………………………………
22
2.4.1.3.1. Metaphorical extension of the enclosure prototype ………
22
2.4.1.3.2. Metaphorical extension of the inclusion sense ……………
25
2.4.1.3.3. Metaphorical extension of the medium sense …………….
26
2.5.1.4. Radial Category of “in” ………………………………………
27
2.5.1.5. Summary ………………………………………………………

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2.5.3. Similarities and Differences between English and Vietnamese
Spatial Cognition …………………………………………………………
2.5.3.1. Similarities …………………………………………………….
2.5.3.2. Differences …………………………………………………….

40
40
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CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………
42
1. Conclusions ………………………………………………………………
42
2. Pedagogical Implications …………………………………………………
43
3. Limitations of the Research and Suggestions for Further Research ……….
45
REFERENCES …………………………………………………………
APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………
46
I

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ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS


There is a well-established fact that learners of English as a Foreign Language more
often than not confront a great many difficulties in actively mastering the language. As a
general rule, they seemingly hold the view that English notional categories, namely nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs are crucial, hence striving to learn as many of them as
possible, and that such functional categories as prepositions are of minor significance
because they are limited in number and their meanings are not important to the meaning of
the whole sentence. What is more, the traditional view considers that all the senses of a
preposition are highly arbitrary and are not related to one another. As a matter of fact, both
dictionaries and grammars provide long lists of unrelated senses for each preposition and
its possible uses in different contexts. In other words, EFL learners resort to a great many
linguistic materials whose authors have made monumental efforts to describe this type of
words on the grounds of only functions and positions other than semantic factors
contributing to determining their choices in use. For the above reasons, prepositions are
generally troublesome to the learners for whom English is a foreign/second language
(Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, 1999). Boers and Demecheleer (1998) argue that
prepositions are difficult for ESL/EFL learners because they have literal as well as
figurative meanings. For instance, we say, we are at the hospital; or we visit a friend who
is in the hospital, or we lie in bed but on the couch.
Actually, much work has been done in the last decades to find a relationship
between the different senses of English prepositions. Cognitive Linguistics has paid great
attention to polysemy, and specifically to the meaning of prepositions (Lindner, 1982;
Vandeloise, 1991; Pütz & Dirven, 1996; Tyler & Evans, 2003). Interestingly, cognitive
linguists, especially cognitive semanticists have been making momentous contribution to
explaining polysemy in terms of radial categories (Lakoff, 1987) and therefore consider
that the meaning of a polysemous word can be seen as a big semantic network of related
senses. Furthermore, it now seems evident that there is a highly schematic common core to
all the related senses of a preposition, which all derive from a primary spatial schema or
proto-scene (Tyler & Evans, 2003) to other non-spatial, abstract senses “by means of
generalization or specialization of meaning or by metonymic or metaphoric transfer”
(Cuyckens & Radden, 2002)

teachers can apply appropriate teaching methods to help students master the meanings of
prepositions. Besides indispensable roles of the teachers in the students’ learning
achievements, students should be provided with suitable learning strategies to better
language competence as well as cross-cultural awareness.

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For all the above-mentioned reasons, it is strongly desirable for the author to
conduct this thesis.
2. Aims of the study
The current thesis aims at
- uncovering a semantic description of the English preposition in in light of cognitive
semantics
- investigating potential Vietnamese equivalents of the English preposition in
- embarking on pedagogical implications for teaching, learning and translating
English prepositions.
3. Scope of the study
The study is limited to investigating senses of the English preposition in and their
Vietnamese equivalents within cognitive semantic theoretical framework. Not only
prototypical but also derived meanings of the preposition motivated from image-schema
transformations and metaphorical conceptual mappings will be taken into account. This
investigation is based on my manual corpus of 681 in-examples in form of (NP) + in + NP
and NP + V + in + NP, where in functions as a preposition, to the exlusion of others where
in plays the role of an adverb or an affix. The data were collected from three sources,
namely, the English versions of Vanity Fair by Thackeray, W. M., Jane Eyre by Brontë, C.,
and English-Vietnamese translation course books for third and fourth- year English majors
at the MSA. Vietnamese equivalents of those 681 in-occurrences were also identified and
grouped in terms of frequency and percentage to explore differences and similarities
between English and Vietnamese spatial conceptualization and cognition.
4. Significance of the study
This thesis, to some extent, enumerates strong evidence in cognitive semantics that
5
DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES
In this chapter, cognitive semantic framework of the study will be presented.
Specifically, cognitive linguistics and cognitive semantics theory will be briefly discussed
in 1.1 and 1.2; syntactic and semantic perspectives on spatial prepositions will be
demonstrated in 1.3; several primary notions in cognitive semantics employed to
investigate meanings of spatial prepositions will be explicitly put forward in 1.4.
1.1. A Brief Overview of Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive linguistics, a modern school of linguistic study and practice, has been of
special interest since it emerged in the late seventies and early eighties. It is primarily
concerned with investigating the relationship between human language, the mind and
socio-physical experience (Croft & Cruse, 2004; Evans & Green, 2006; Langacker, 1987).
To put it in another way, this paradigm views linguistic knowledge as part of general
cognition and thinking; linguistic behaviour is not separated from other general cognitive
abilities which allow mental processes of reasoning, memory, attention or learning, but
understood as an integral part of it (Johnson, 1987).
There are two main tenets of cognitive linguistics: (i) Language is an integral part
of cognition; (ii) Language is symbolic in nature. The former regulates that language is

meaning construction (conceptualization) Therefore, cognitive semantics studies much of
the area traditionally devoted to pragmatics as well as semantics. As a matter of fact,
Talmy (2000) states that cognitive semantics sees language meaning as a manifestation of
conceptual structure: the nature and organization of mental representation in all its richness
and diversity, and this is what makes it a distinctive approach to linguistic meaning. To put
it plainly, cognitive semanticists have employed language as the lens through which these
cognitive phenomena can be investigated. Consequently, research in cognitive semantics
tends to be interested in modeling the human mind as much as it is concerned with
investigating linguistic semantics.
According to Talmy (2000), Lakoff & Johnson (1980), and Geerearts (1999),
cognitive semantics complies with four specific guiding principles: i) Conceptual structure
is embodied; ii) Semantic structure is conceptual structure; iii) Meaning representation is
encyclopaedic; iv) Meaning construction is conceptualization.
The first tenet that conceptual structure is embodied resides in that, due to the
nature of our bodies, including our neuro-anatomical architecture, we have a species-
specific view of the world (Geerearts, 1993; Talmy, 1985, 2000; Taylor, 1989). In other
words, our construal of reality is mediated, in large measure, by the nature of our
embodiment. We can only talk about what we can perceive and conceive, and the things

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that we can perceive and conceive derive from embodied experience. From this point of
view, the human mind must bear the imprint of embodied experience. This position holds
that conceptual is a consequence of the nature of our embodiment and thus is embodied.
The second guiding principle; that is to say, semantic structure is conceptual
structure, asserts that language refers to concepts in the mind of the speaker rather than,
directly, to entities which inhere in an objectively real external world. Put another way,
semantic structure (the meanings conventionally associated with words and other linguistic
units) can be equated with conceptual structure (i.e., concepts) (Rosch, 1973). However,
the claim that semantic structure can be equated with conceptual structure does not mean
that the two are identical. Instead, cognitive semanticists hold that the meanings associated

prepositions appear with verbs describing states or conditions, especially be; prepositions
of direction appear with verbs of motion.
1.3.2 Syntactic Perspectives on Spatial Prepositions
Quirk et al (1985) states that a preposition expresses a relation between two entities.
One of these entities is called the prepositional complement and it relates to another part of
the sentence. The prepositional complement is often a noun phrase, a nominalised wh-
clause, a nominalised ing-clause, or rarely, an adjective or adverb. The preposition and its
complement compose a prepositional phrase, which usually functions syntactically as a
postmodifier in a noun phrase or as an adverbial. Spatial prepositions constitute part of
prepositions; therefore, they also acquire these perspectives.
1.3.3. Semantic Perspectives on Spatial Prepositions
Rice (1996) argues that a preposition possesses its own lexical meaning because it
stands apart from a noun or pronoun with which different prepositions can be used. In
other words, a preposition has its lexical meaning on the one hand, and a lexical viability,
on the other. In this work we support this point of view which logically leads to the fact
that the existence of an independent lexical meaning presupposes the existence of some
semantic kernel around which some additional peripheral meanings are grouped. There is
no unique approach to what a lexical meaning of a preposition is and some consider it as
"relationship between words", as an extra linguistic aspect and phenomenon. The semantic
perspective on prepositions is somewhat trickier to account for, since it is possible to draw
an intricate network of meanings around each preposition.
The prototypical meaning of most prepositions is always a spatial relation (Tyler &
Evans, 2003; Cienki, 1989; Herskovits, 1986; Vandeloise, 1991), and other meanings can
be derived from this one. In describing a relational expression of a spatial preposition,
Langacker (1987) used the terms trajector (TR) and landmark (LM). The figure of which

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the location is indicated is the TR whereas the reference point specifying the location is the
LM, and so does Taylor (1989), explicitly following him, whereas Talmy (2000) prefers to
speak about primary and secondary objects. In the present research study, Langacker’s

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physical and social character (Johnson, 1987). Lakoff (1987) proposes that experiential
realism goes along with connectionism as well as biologism and social realism. It assumes
a commitment to the existence of the real world and it acknowledges that reality places
constraints on concepts. The body has the ability to reason which is shaped by generic
inheritance, environment, and social as well as physical functioning. Lakoff (1987) stresses
human bodies and recurring activities provide us with a direct experiential basis for
understanding a wealth of image schemas.
Image schema was defined by Johnson (1987: 29) as ‘a recurrent pattern, shape,
and regularity’ in and of ‘actions, perceptions and conceptions’ that are on-going. With
reference to Gibbs & Colston (1995) cited in Geeraerts & Cuyckens (2007), image
schemas are experiential gestalts; that is to say, different patterns of recurrent bodily
experiences that emerge throughout activity as we manipulate objects, orient ourselves
spatially and temporally, and direct our perceptual focus for various purposes. Likewise,
Johnson (1987) and Lakoff (1987) held the view that our experience is preconceptually
structured at a level where gestalts for general overall shapes are relatively rich in structure.
Both Johnson and Lakoff describe some of these gestalts under the name of image schemas.
Different scholars provides different lists of image schemas. Thus, for Lakoff, the
CONTAINER schema that defines the predicates IN and OUT would work as the basis for
understanding the body as container, the visual fields, and set models. The PART-WHOLE
schema is transferred to domains such as families, teams, organizations, marriage, and so
forth. The LINK schema helps conceptualize social and interpersonal relationships. The
CENTRE-PERIPHERY schema offers the difference between important things or matters
seen as central, and less important or secondary matters as peripheral. Finally, the
SOURCE-PATH schema gives the clue for purposes in our daily life as destinations of a
journey. Other image schemas are PROXIMITY-DISTANCE; FRONT-BACK orientation;
LINEAR order; UP-DOWN, etc. According to Lakoff, these image schemas might be also
deeply grounded in common human experience that they constitute universal prelinguistic
cognitive structures. These image schemas lead to primary conceptualizations in the
domain of physical experience and will define the primigenial use of words. The internal

According to Langacker (1990), metaphor is the main conceptual mechanism
through which we comprehend abstract concepts and perform abstract reasoning.
Metaphors are mappings across conceptual domains that establish correspondences
between entities in the target and source domains, and can project inference patterns from
the source domain onto the target domain. They are grounded in the body, and in everyday
experience and knowledge, to the extent that they constitute a subsystem of our conceptual
system. The system of conventional conceptual metaphor is unconscious, automatic, and

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constantly in use; it is central to our understanding of experience and to the way we act on
that understanding; it plays a major role in both the grammar and lexicon of a language;
part of it is universal, part of it culture-specific. This assumption implies, on the one hand,
that the inference patterns of the source domain remain untouched in the target domain,
and on the other hand, that only metaphorical mappings are possible when the inference
patterns of the target domain are consistent with all or part of the source domain (Lakoff,
1990; Barcelona, 2003)
It is worth emphasizing that metaphors are not just figures of speech in literature,
but also pervasive in everyday language. Furthermore, metaphors are not just language but
also a conceptual tool to understand and create more abstract conceptual domains.
With respect to spatial semantic categories, certain aspects of the basic physical
domain are highlighted to understand and create abstract domains (Lakoff & Johnson,
1980). In other words, our experience with the concrete world like people, objects, actions
and events are used to conceptualize abstract phenomena. In the case of prepositions, when
these are used in figurative meanings, what we have is a metaphorical mapping from
physical space onto conceptual space, since conceptual structure is understood in terms of
conceptual image schemas plus a metaphorical mapping (Boers, 1996). Conceptual image
schemas based on spatial experience are directly understood, they provide the conceptual
basis for the uses of prepositions in the physical domain, and are extended metaphorically
to structure other domains. Thus metaphor theory gives insight into the mechanisms of
conventional figurative language creation and processing. Reasonably, this can be seen as

of imagination (such as metaphorical mappings and image schema transformation)
demonstrating a natural and systematic organization of related senses.
1.4.4. Polysemy and Spatial Prepositions
Polysemy, according to Taylor (2002), is a single linguistic form associating with a
number of distinct but related senses. Over the past few decades, the issue of polysemy has
been paid attention within the framework of cognitive semantics. As a matter of fact,
cognitive linguists (Langacker, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Johnson, 1987) hold important views
about polysemy: the lexicon constitutes a natural category of its various senses organized
with respect to the most central sense and thus form a semantic network. In other words, on
account of cognitive semantics, a lexicon is much more
Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff (1987) and claim that polysemy can be
attributed to figurative usage. Indeed, it is held that not only our language, but also our
cognition operates figuratively. Polysemy is accounted for within a general approach to
human categorization that rejects the idea that human reasoning is solely based on the
capacity to manipulate abstract symbols. Rather, human reasoning is held to be grounded

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in perception, bodily movement, and experience of a physical and social nature. In this
view, metaphor, metonymy and mental imagery are the means by which abstract concepts,
which are not directly grounded in experience, are understood. This approach is
complemented by insights from prototype-theory (Rosch, 1977, 1978) and the theory of
cognitive models (Lakoff, 1987). Within this account, the related meanings of words form
categories and the meanings bear family resemblances to one another. To use Lakoff’s
words: polysemy arises from the fact that there are systematic relationships between
different cognitive models and between elements of the same model (Lakoff, 1987: 13).
This view has given rise to different models for lexical networks based on the notion that
the different meanings of a given lexeme “form a radially structured category, with a
central member and links defined by image-schema transformation and metaphors”
(Lakoff, 1987: 460).
Cognitive semanticists have made several attempts at showing the structure of

viewing arrangement. The former signifies that the viewer has a clear perceptual access to
the perceived object which is within the objective scene; however, he is excluded by both
the objective scene and his perceptual field. By contrast, in the latter the viewer is included
in both the objective scene and the perceptual field, indicating that the viewer can become
the focus of viewing attention. 16
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
In this chapter, the research questions will be restated in 2.1, the methods of the
study will be hightlighted in 2.2, the data will be described in 2.3, the analytical framework
of the study will be introduced in 2.4, and data analysis, findings and discussion will be
presented in 2.5. Particularly, in section 2.5, which constitutes the central focus of the
current study, meanings of the English preposition in and its Vietnamese equivalents will
be thoroughly explored.
2.1. Research Questions
It is worth restating the two research questions that guideline the study:
- From a cognitive semantic perspective, what meanings does the English

Additionally, as regards the second research question, contrastive analysis is
incorporated as a tool to investigate potential Vietnamese equivalents of the English in. As
James emphasized in his book (1980) that contrastive analysis plays an important role in
understanding two different languages, and that it can also present a possible solution to
the equivalence problem. In this way, a detailed explanation of the specific differences and
similarities in using language as a reflective tool of people’s cognitive structuring of space
will be provided.
2.3. Data
A corpus of 681 in-instances were collected for our analysis. As far as the scope of
the study is concerned, only occurrences of in in form of (NP) + in + NP and NP + V + in
+ NP, where in plays the role of a preposition rather than an adverb or an affix, were taken
from three sources, namely, Vanity Fair by Thackeray, W. M., Jane Eyre by Bronte, C. and
English-Vietnamese translation course books for third and fourth-year English majors at
the MSA. Those examples which were found to be extremely repetitive were excluded. All
these sources were chosen for the fact that they are present in the curricula designed for the
third and fourth-year English majors at the MSA, and that the objectivity of translational
equivalents could be guaranteed.
Actually, of all the 681 in-samples which have been gathered manually, 221
instances occur in Vanity Fair by Thackeray, W. M., 198 in Jane Eyre by Bronte, C. and
262 in the English-Vietnamese translation course books for third and fourth-year English
majors at the MSA. The purpose has been to provide a sufficient amount of information for
the task of disambiguation in those cases where more than one sense could have been
interpreted for the preposition under analysis. In addition, all of their Vietnamese
translational equivalents have been listed as well. This means that the selected English
preposition in as well as its Vietnamese variations were identified. The process of
identification and selection were carried out manually by scrutinizing both texts. The

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preposition extracted from source texts and their target (translated) texts equivalents were
then classified and sorted out accordingly in separated tables. The frequency for the


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as well as similarities between English and Vietnamese spatial conceptualisation will be
uncovered. Put another way, it is interesting to find out how cognitive elements can be
encoded in the use of different languages.
2.5. Data Analysis, Findings and Discussions
This section is designed to target two main points, namely, distinct but related
meanings of the polysemous English spatial preposition in and its Vietnamese equivalents.
The former will be analysed in three parts: first, in presenting the conceptual image schema
or prototypical meaning of in, second, in demonstrating the non-prototypical senses of in
and metaphorical extensions, and third, in developing the radial category of in. The latter
will be devoted to investigating Vietnamese translational equivalents of in. Specifically,
prepositional as well as non-prepositional Vietnamese equivalents of in will be thoroughly
analysed and accounted for.
2.5.1. Meanings of the English Preposition “in”
2.5.1.1. Prototypical schema for “in”
What is proposed in numerous works on prepositions like Lindkvist (1950), Miller,
G & Johnson-Laird, P. (1976) and Herskovits (1986), Cienki (1989) is that image schema
introduces the primigenial conceptual schema, or impetus for the concept. That central
schema, however, does not remain unchanged through various contexts, and polysemy
takes place. In this way, it is pervasively worth mentioning that though the origin of the
concept in may be looked for in light of container schema, and the central schema for in, as
claimed to be derived from bodily experience tentatively gives rise to enclosure prototype.
It is found that fifty nine out of in-occurrences in our corpus convey this typical meaning.
The enclosure prototype, which constitutes sense 1 in the radial category, as argued
by such researchers as Vandeloise (1991) and Lindkvist (1950), requires that the LM is
three-dimensional, hollow and materially enclosed on all sides. It subsumes the three
semantic modes of the spatial conceptualisation of in: the TR coincides with the interior
region defined by the LM; the TR can move within that interior region, and finally the LM
exerts control over the TR, either offering it protection by preventing its access of the