Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

282 JULIA A. JOLLY

functions, the CS criteria for category membership makes lexical generali­

zation a formidable task. The lists of rules required to derive related func­

tions seem little more satisfactory than the lexicographer's solution of

unmotivated lists of prepositions with each predicate. In fact, Brugman's

detailed analysis of over concludes that a core sense does not exist.

The Prototype or Central Tendencies Approach, developed by Rosch

(1978) and employed by Brugman (1980), Hawkins (1985) and Jackendoff

(1983), is less demanding in its requirements. Categories are defined, not

by clear-cut boundaries, but by "strong, central tendencies internal to the

category." (Hawkins:230) Natural categories are assumed to shade into one

another inasmuch as peripheral or non-prototypical members of a given cat­

egory share characteristics with structures in more than one category.^4

The Prototype Approach, as described by Hawkins, also recognizes

practical knowledge as a "legitimate part of the base in predicate structure"

(288), wherein contextual lexical disambiguation is regarded as a semantic

regularity. Thus, a context-based divergence from a category prototype

does not require a rule in the Central Tendencies Approach. The categories

of practical and lexical knowledge are assumed to be interdependent. This

assumption allows us to posit a LS for a given lexical item, e.g., from,

which includes a number of semantic components. The precise mix of LS

components "excited or inhibited" (Hawkins' terms, 289) depends on the

surrounding context — in particular, the semantics of the verb with which

the preposition occurs and practical knowledge of the landmark, or prepos­

itional object. The assumption of gradations, not only of category member­

ship but of practical and lexical information available for category judg­

ments, eliminates some problems in prepositional specification. For exam­

ple, the non-predicative prepositions in sentences (20) and (21) mark the

subcategorized-for (core) locative arguments of insert and give.

(20) John inserted the key into the lock.

(21) John gave the book to Mary.

In both cases, our analysis posits a prepositional LS, as in (22), where y =

the theme (key/book), χ = the locative argument (lock/Mary) and the sta­

tive predicates for (20) and (21) are be-at' and have', respectively.

(22) BECOME stative' (x,y)

If practical and contextual information is assumed to inform prepositional

specification, we can posit prototypical to as the unmarked prepositional

choice for motion and transfer of possession verbs such as give (as in (21))