Naslov
Why 'similar to', but 'different from'?

Autori
Radden, Günter ; Matthis, Elizabeth

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
Perspectives on Prepositions

Urednik/ci
Cuyckens, Hubert ; Radden, Günter

Izdavač
Max Niemeyer Verlag

Grad
Tübingen

Godina
2002

Raspon stranica
231-255

ISBN
3-484-30454-5

Sažetak
The use of spatial prepositions with similarity and difference is obviously motivated by conceptual metaphor: similarity is understood in terms of closeness as in 'This is close to the truth' and difference is understood in terms of distance 'This is far from the truth'. But why should dynamic prepositions be used to describe static static situations and why should closeness and similarity be seen as motion to a goal and distance and difference as motion away 'from' a source? Cross-linguistic comparisons show that this distribution is not restricted to English but predominates as a general pattern. Radden and Matthis argue that this linguistic pattern points to an underlying folk model, in which close and similar things are seen as being attracted and distant and different things as being repulsed. English is unique among the languages studied in that 'different' may not only be contrued with the Source preposition 'from', but also with the Goal preposition 'to' and the comparison preposition 'than'. Usually, these prepositional alternatives are claimed to be no more than stylistic or geograpical variants. The authors claim, however, that each of the three prepositions is associated with its own schematic meaning: 'from' evokes the repulsion schema, 'to' the the attraction schema, and 'than' the comparison schema. An empirical study based on questionnaries largely confirms these assumptions.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA