A COGNITIVE GRAMMAR ANALYSIS OF THE POLISH PREPOSITION ‘Z’. TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL SCHEMA(S)
Olga Słabońska
Keywords:
cognitive grammar, preposition, trajector, landmark, atemporal relation, concep tual schemaAbstract
The paper aims at presenting selected intralinguistic problems in Polish referring to the meaning of the Polish preposition z. In the phrases like kawa z mlekiem (coffee with milk), kawa z ekspresu (drip coffee/espresso), kawa z Rwandy (coffee from Rwanda) the preposition has one form, however the meaning of it in each of the phrases differs. The paper concentrates on the schematic meaning of the preposition itself, bearing in mind that prepositions are relational predicates (Langacker, 1987, 2000, 2008). The phrases indicate possible differences/contrasts in the meaning of the Polish preposition z. Etymologically z (cf. Boryś, 2005; Brückner, 1927), has at least three different origins, and the WSJP online dictionary (https://wsjp.pl) offers as many as eighteen meaning definitions of the preposition. Thus, it becomes problematic whether the single form z represents different or even contrastive meanings and is polysemous, or it is possible to extract a single highly abstract conceptual schema which sanctions all the possible usages of the discussed preposition in Polish. The analysis of the preposition is rooted in Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar and operates on the abstract figures of trajector and landmark to present the schematic meaning of z.
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