Professional paper
Some Cognitive Properties of English Continuation-Marking Aspectual Particles
Matjaž Zgonc
; Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
Continuation-marking aspectual particles are a means of construing
an event described with an atelic verb as having a prolonged event-
internal time. Speakers of English use them frequently to construe such
events. The main thesis of this article is that they do so because various
cognitive properties of continuation-marking aspectual particles allow for relatively easy cognitive processing of the particles. Two such properties are discussed: iconicity and metaphoricity. First, iconic motivation connecting the length of event structure and the length of the utterance is discussed. Then, the submetaphor of TIME IS SPACE, EVENT-INTERNAL TIME IS SPACE is used to link the arrangement patterns of prepositions ‘on’, ‘along’, ‘around’, and the adverb ‘away’ in terms of trajectors and landmarks, with the domain of EVENT-INTERNAL TIME. Additionally, the interaction patterns between conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy are discussed with regard to the particles and their behaviour. The final result is four diagrams giving schematic descriptions of how the metaphoric transfer of spatial concepts onto the domain of EVENT-INTERNAL TIME works for each particle, what semantic possibilities and restrictions the original spatial configurations bring when the mapping is complete and what historical reflexes still affect the choice of particles in present-day English.
Keywords
aspectual particles; continuation-marking; iconicity; metaphor; metonymy; interaction patterns
Hrčak ID:
244512
URI
Publication date:
9.7.2020.
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