Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

PREPOSITION ASSIGNMENT IN ENGLISH 281

ments — Subject, Object and PP's). The former we call thematic relations,

the other grammatical relations.

This bridge between meaning and structure is the analytical focus of the
present study. We want to be able to correlate semantic structures and syn­
tactic functions by lexical specification, to explain and predict functional
roles of specific prepositions. Further, we want to demonstrate that prepo­
sitions having both adjunct (predicative) and case-marking (non-predica­
tive) roles, as illustrated in (17) and (18), have common components in LS.

(17) John died from malaria.
(18) John ran from the house.
Finally we hope to provide an analysis of some of the polysemes which
instantiate predicative meanings of given prepositions. For example, the
predicative function of from in (19) is assumed to be related in a systematic
and demonstrable way to the predicative function in (17), as revealed in LS.
(19) John knows from experience that Aquino will win.
Our overall objective, then, is to discover some generalizations about
the content and functions of a limited set of prepositions in English. A zeal­
ous lexicographer might argue that this is a pointless endeavor, given the
capacity of the human memory. However, as Lakoff & Brugman (1986:12)
point out,
the existence of a large memory does not explain the existence of polysemy
at all. In fact, if anything, it would favor rampant monosemy rather than
polysemy, since it should be equally easy to remember words with single
senses, and continually add new lexical items, each with only one sense.
The evidence suggests, rather, that it is easier to learn and use new moti­
vated senses for old lexical items than completely new lexical items.

2.2 Categorization

The central issue in polysemy is categorization. If two predicative functions

of a given lexical item (as with from in (17) and (19)) are assumed to be

polysemes, what system of categorization relates their semantic compo­

nents? The Core Sense (CS) Approach employed by Bennett and

Caramazza & Grober (1976) assumes that some semantic content is shared

by all of the observed senses of a polysemous lexical item. The CS is

entered in the lexicon, and all divergent senses are derived by context-sen­

sitive rules. Given the diachronic and synchronic overlap of prepositional