A SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH LOCATIVE PREPOSITIONS

Abstract : Locative prepositions are members of a small closed class of English formatives. We present here an analysis of the thirty three English locative prepositions in the context of a theory which provides a basis for extracting semantic readings for phrases containing these words. The meaning of a preposition is first analyzed with function concepts which pick out the relevant characteristics of objects to be related. Then a relation concept is specified which describes the special relation between the value of functions. The resulting complex relation marker will thus have the form R(f(x),g(y)) where f and g are function markers, R is a relation marker, and x and y are the objects to be related.