Some preliminary remarks on spatial distinctions in Lithuanian
Full text
ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA
XLVIII (2003), 59-70
Some preliminary remarks
on spatial distinctions in Lithuanian
KRZYSZTOF MALESA
Warsaw University
The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for the description of spatial expressions in
Lithuanian. Until now, only structuralist descriptions of Lithuanian spatial expressions have been
offered. The author argues that the structuralist approach should be abandoned in favour of a cogni-
tive one, and introduces a number of basic notions which the now classical studies by such authors as
Talmy and Herskovits have proved to be useful tools for investigating the conceptualization of space in
language.
1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Spatial cognition in the Baltic languages has not been thoroughly studied so far.
Previous linguistic studies of spatial relations, by such authors as Valiulytė (1995,
1998) or Sukys (1998) as well as the descriptions in the Academy Grammar of
Lithuanian are rather limited in scope and based on the structural method of descrip-
tion. This mode of description provides us with a wide variety of lists, compiled on
the basis of the morphological or syntactic structure of verbs or phrases. From the
point of view of cognitive linguistics, this is not quite the result that should be pro-
duced by research into the spatial system of language. As I will attempt to prove in
the further parts of this paper, in order to describe spatial structuring and to under-
stand the origin of some so far quite cursorily described spatial phrases in Lithuanian
(e.g., the so-called compound prepositions or samplaikiniai prielinksniai), one should,
first of all, recognize and understand the way in which speakers conceptualize space
and objects located within it. Cognitive description is at present commonly regarded
as the most appropriate paradigm for the exploration of spatial systems in natural
language.
The foundations for the cognitive study of space have been laid in the early seven-
ties', along with the very first descriptions of spatial categories. It is thus a quite
recently established discipline, and the advantages associated with it are undeniable.
Like other new ideas, it is conducive to experiments, to the development of new re-
search tools and, last but not least, to interdisciplinary contacts, as cognitive research
eagerly takes advantage of methods and conceptions developed by other disciplines
that are not strictly connected with linguistics.
The developmental path of cognitive linguistics from its beginnings till current research was depicted in
accessible way by Ungerer & Schmid (1996).
60 | KRZYSZTOF MALESA
The primary aim of this paper is to provide, in a tentative way, a basic conceptual
framework for the description of the Lithuanian spatial system. The basic geometric
and dimensional distinctions marked in Lithuanian will also be briefly characterized.
The descriptive framework I have made use of is based, on the one hand, on studies
focusing on spatial structuring as conceived in cognitive linguistics (Talmy 1983),
and, on the other hand, on studies whose aim is to present an analysis of the seman-
tics and pragmatics of locative expressions (Herskovits 1986). Owing to the signifi-
cant differences between the English system of spatial expressions investigated in
the above-mentioned studies and the Lithuanian one, some elements of description
are formulated in a slightly different way, adjusted to the general structural proper-
ties of the Lithuanian language’.
2. THE PRIMARY BREAKUP OF A SPATIAL SCENE.
SCHEMATIZATION
It is an obvious and undisputed fact that everybody perceives his surroundings, and
thereby space in general, as a set of specific elements, visible or located through senses
other than sight, as in (1):
(1) Uz sienos dainavo vaikai.
“The children were singing behind the wall’.
At the level of linguistic structure, a spatial scene cannot be represented by all of
the components that can be perceived through the human senses. When we take a
look at any sentence describing spatial relations, it becomes clear that only a few
relevant components of reality are singled out to represent the whole referent scene.
The remaining components are left out of consideration.
Thus, it would not be correct to say that a spatial scene is represented in language
just as a complex of many elements related to each other in a specific way. As noticed
by Talmy, language uses its closed-class elements? as well as the structure of the sen-
tence to single out certain elements which are relevant to the description of spatial
relations. This kind of process has acquired the name of SCHEMATIZATION.
In the course of this process, one portion of the spatial scene is singled out for
primary focus. Its spatial features, viz. its site when stationary, its path when moving,
and its orientation within the referent scene, regardless of movement, are character-
ized in terms of another portion of the scene. Sometimes a third portion may be
involved as well“. These objects can be provisionally referred to as ‘primary object’
and ‘secondary object’.
2 I would like to thank prof. Axel Holvoet for his invaluable comments on the paper and the corrections
to the English text.
A class of words of morphemes whose membership is fixed and can be listed, e.g. personal pronouns (cf.
Matthews 1997: 57).
The so-called "Secondary Ground’. This problem will not be discussed in the present paper, for further
description cf. Talmy (1983).
a
SPATIAL DISTINCTIONS IN LITHUANIAN | 61
The selection of secondary elements or REFERENCE OBJECTS, used for characterizing
the Primary Object's spatial features, is not accidental. The reference object selected
within the scene has a location, and sometimes also geometrical properties, that are
already known, or assumed to be known, to the addressee. This is a necessary pre-
requisite, as it is only under such conditions that an object can be used as a point of
reference.
Site, path, or orientation of the primary object can be indicated in terms of distance
as well as by describing its relation to the geometry of the second object:
(2) Dviratis stovėjo šalia mokyklos.
“The bike stood near the school’.
(3) Jonas gulėjo skersai lovos.
‘John was lying across the bed’.
As we see in (2), the location of the primary object, the bike, is characterized by
šalia in terms of distance from the location of the school, without any further infor-
mation on the geometrical properties of any object. Information of a different type is
involved in (3), where certain obvious geometrical properties of objects and relations
between them are described by means of the preposition skersai. The basic informa-
tion relating to spatial orientation and geometry of the objects characterized in (3)
can be briefly summarized as follows: (a) the objects are collocated (distance), and
(b) the length of one of the objects is perpendicular to the other’s width. The geo-
metrical properties of the primary and secondary objects will be discussed in more
detail in the second part of this paper.
Apart from certain properties of the objects, known or assumed to be know to the
addressee, and from orientation in space, the distribution of referencing functions is
usually determined by some additional relations between two objects, selected as pri-
mary and secondary. Talmy proposes for these relations the following kind of align-
ment (the table is reproduced as in Talmy, 1983: 230-231):
TABLE 1. PROPERTIES OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OBJECTS
PRIMARY OBJECT SECONDARY OBIECT
a has spatial variables to be determined acts as a reference object with known
spatial characteristics
b more movable more permanently located
Cc smaller larger
d conceived as geometrically simpler taken to have greater geometric
(often point-like) complexity
62 | KRZYSZTOF MALESA
CONTINUATION OF TABLE I
PRIMARY OBJECT SECONDARY OBJECT
e more salient more backgrounded
f more recently on the scene / in awareness earlier on the scene / in memory
This table reflects the assumption that two objects, located in the reference scene,
are usually not of egual status. This assumption can be conveniently illustrated by
example (2). If both objects were egual in status, we could just interchange them and
create a pair of sentences carrying the same meaning. As we see in (4) and (4'), such
an interchange does not produce a correct sentence; although there is no violation of
grammatical rules in the asterisked sentence (4°), it sounds unnatural:
(4) Dviratis stovėjo šalia mokyklos.
“The bike stood near the school’ :
(4) *Mokykla stovėjo šalia dviračio.
**The school stood near the bike’.
It should be noted, however, that there are cases when relatively large and more
permanently located objects are not used as points of reference. This is observed
when the main purpose of the use of an expression is to identify an object rather than
to describe its spatial properties. In such a case, the location of the object is left out of
consideration, as in:
(5) Kalnas, kuris šiuo momentu yra po lėktuvu, vadinasi Mount Shasta.
“The mountain under the plane just now is Mount Shasta’.
(6) Paduok man šitą knygą šalia piestuko!
‘Give me the book next to the pencil!”
Thus, when the main purpose is just to identify the object without paying attention
to its spatial properties, the criteria for choosing primary and secondary object may
depart from the general principles.
2.1 Prototypes and ideal meanings
The asymmetry observed in (4) is conditioned mainly by the semantic function of
both nouns, i. e., by our common knowledge of the world, in which buildings are gen-
erally larger than objects like a bike and have also a more permanent location. Ac-
cording to the prototype theory of word meaning, when we think of a school and a
bike we use prototypical instances of buildings and vehicles and then we relate par-
3 Cf. Herskovits (1986: 36-38).
SPATIAL DISTINCTIONS IN LITHUANIAN | 63
ticular types of objects to these instances. Thus, prototypes enable us to establish the
approximate size and mobility of the objects and to classify them in this way as a
Primary or Secondary Object, according to the table above.
The use of prototypes in the description of meanings enables us to assume a quite
coherent categorization of the world and to describe some aspects of spatial model-
ling in a more straightforward way. It allows us to understand the way language users
treat objects in their utterances. Of course, there are no prototypes in the real world,
and when describing designates we should rather speak of degrees of prototypicality.
Thus, prototypes should be conceived of as a gradient category that allows us to clas-
sify objects and their cognition in a more consistent way.
Prototypes are generally useful for the description of the spatial properties of indi-
vidual objects. In order to give a more detailed account of spatial relationships be-
tween two or more objects as described, for instance, by prepositional phrases, an
additional notion is needed that could be used as an auxiliary descriptive tool and
that would represent the most clear and obvious spatial situations, thereby providing
a basis for further description. For such ‘most typical’ situations Herskovits (1986)
proposes the term IDEAL MEANING.
The ideal meaning of a preposition may be comprehended as simple relation, pro-
posed as the meaning of a preposition in grammars and linguistic studies. It is a rela-
tion between two or more geometrically ideal objects, such as points or lines. Thus,
all possible uses of concrete prepositions are derived from an ideal meaning, using
various, less or more significant transformations. Some clear instances of the ideal
meaning and its modified use are provided by one of the basic topological preposi-
tions, ant. The most characteristic instance of the use of ant will be a situation in
which an object of average size (e.g. a book) is located on a flat, horizontal surface.
There are also two essential conditions that must be satisfied in order for this prepo-
sition to be used: (a) the primary object must be in direct contiguity with the surface;
(b) the reference object must support the primary object. All the stipulations just
listed can be easily found in expressions like:
(7) Knyga yra ant stalo.
‘The book is on the table’.
This expression will normally be interpreted as meaning that the book is directly
on the table, without tablecloth, and that the book is not on top of a pile of other
books located on the table; under these circumstances one can say that example (7)
reflects the ideal meaning of the preposition ant“.
On the other hand, one could also imagine a situation where location is replaced
with movement and there is no direct contiguity, though support is still required.
This can be interpreted as a further adaptation of the ideal meaning described above:
Herskovits (1986: 49) defines the ideal meaning of the English preposition on in the following way: “[...]
on: for a geometric construct X to be contiguous with a line or surface Y; if Yis the surface of an object O,
and X is the space occupied by another object O,„for O, to support O,.”
64 | KRZYSZTOF MALESA
(8) Ant grindų žaidė Jonukas, baisiai purvindamas kilimą.
‘Johnny was playing on the floor, soiling the carpet terribly’.
In the following example, the requirements with regard to contiguity and support
are not met at all:
(9) Simbolis išraižytas ant akmens.
‘A symbol carved on the stone’.
Expressions (8) and (9) are quite distant from the ideal meaning, as various adap-
tations and shifts have been applied. But both examples can still be interpreted as
varieties of the ‘optimal situation’ shown in (7). On the other hand, our knowledge of
the secondary object and certain instances of the use of locative expressions suggest a
second possibility, as the meaning of the locative case is conceptually close to in-
stances like (9). Thus, for part of the Lithuanian language users, the following ex-
pression will probably also be acceptable, alongside (9):
(10) Simbolis išraižytas akmenyje.
‘A symbol carved in the stone’.
2.2 Figure & Ground (Reference Object)
The primary and secondary objects described above for the purposes of
schematization and basic breakup of a spatial scene are working terms, and they sound
rather vague. For a more concise and transparent spatial description one should use
conventional, standardized terms. Linguists working so far on space have employed
many different, but in fact very similar notions. Among all these terms the pair used
by Talmy seems to be quite suggestive and useful. Talmy has noticed a close similarity
between the theory of “first” an ‘secondary’ objects and Gestalt Psychology, which makes
use of the notions of FIGURE and GROUND. He gives the following characterization of
the Figure and Ground, appropriate for linguistic purposes (Talmy 1983: 232):
The Figure is a moving or conceptually moveable object, whose site, path, or orientation
is conceived as a variable the particular value of which is the salient issue.
The Ground is a reference object (itself having a stationary setting within a reference
frame) with respect to which the Figures site, path, or orientation receives characterization.
As Talmy concedes, for some types of situations the notion of Reference Object
may be more expressive than that of Ground, so that it may be in use instead. This
terminological usage will be followed in the further parts of this paper.
SPATIAL DISTINCTIONS IN LITHUANIAN | 65
3. FIGURE AND GROUND GEOMETRIES AND THEIR
RELATIONS
The constituent parts of the language system are related to space, and its closed-
class elements ascribe to objects certain spatial properties. Spatial studies commonly
term them GEOMETRIES.
One should say that the geometry of the Figure is usually characterized by spatial
elements in a more straightforward way than that of the Ground. Thus, in most cases,
the Figure may be interpreted just as a point-like, i.e. symmetrical, non-biased ob-
ject, or as a similar kind of simple form. Nevertheless, one can also find cases where
the geometry ascribed to the Figure is quite complex. The most striking example of a
preposition that attributes a set of geometrical features to the Figure is skersai ‘across’.
One is able do describe at least a few of the properties indicated by this preposition,
which is also possible for the English examples analyzed by Herskovits and Talmy. A
typical instance is provided by sentence (11):
(11) Lenta gulėjo skersai geležinkelio bėgių.
“The board lay across the railway bed’.
The basic meaning elements conveyed by this preposition are that lenta (the Fig-
ure) is linear and the Ground represented by bégiai is a narrow fragment of a plane
with two parallel edges. One could describe such type of objects as ‘ribbonal’. Apart
from this basic information, the Figure’s relations to the Ground may be specified in
the following way’:
1) the Figure is a linear object, bounded at both ends;
2) the Ground is a ‘ribbonal’ type of object;
3) the Figure is horizontal and thus parallel to the plane of the Ground;
4) Figure and Ground are approximately perpendicular;
5) the Figure borders on the plane of the Ground and is supported by it;
6) the length of the Figure cannot be shorter than the width of the Ground;
7) both sides of the Figure stick out (approximately evenly) of the Ground’s plane.
All factors specified above are equally relevant. It should be emphasized that one
cannot describe them as components of the IDEAL MEANING of the preposition skersai.
Within the ‘ideal meaning’ of a preposition, certain shifts and adaptations are accept-
able, and such shifts do not cause another preposition to be used. On the other hand,
the factors listed above are integral components of the meaning of the preposition
skersai and if one of them is absent, another preposition must be used. For instance,
when the Figure’s length is smaller then the Ground’s width (condition 6), the prepo-
sition ant must be used:
7 Cf. Talmy (1983: 234-235).
66 | KRZYSZTOF MALESA
(12) Lenta gulėjo ant geležinkelio bėgių kelio.
“The board lay on the railway bed’.
Thus, in some cases the Figure’s geometries are depicted in more complex way than
just as a point. There is one peculiar type of Figure, described in various ways in the
linguistic literature, which seems to be commonly used in most languages. It refers to
a point-like or linear Figure which is moving along a linear, specified path (the
Ground). Sometimes one can refer in a similar way to a stationary, linear Figure by
using a variety of verbs suggesting movement:
(13) Kelias eina netoli kaimo.
“The road runs near the house’.
This virtual movement can be implied here because the Figure is linear, i. e., it may
be conceptualized in a way which is markedly different from the way point-like ob-
jects are conceptualized. According to Talmy, such a Figure “is scanned along its length
by one’s focus of attention”. This kind of interpretation appears quite useful as a
means of describing what has been called ‘dynamic localization’, viz. a situation when
a verb of motion is used though no physical translocation is involved in the expres-
sion. The structural method of description yields no explanation for such uses, as it
focuses attention on grammatical structure, in which there is no factor motivating the
use of a verb of motion. The explanation can only be found outside the structure — in
the way the Figure is conceptualized. The only way of accounting for this ‘virtual
movement’ is adopting a cognitive analysis.
Unlike what we observe for the Figure, the closed-class elements of language pro-
vide us, in most cases, with a broad range of geometric distinctions for the Ground
(Reference Object). For instance, one could speak of a gradable ‘partiteness’ of the
Reference object, which can be expressed by various parts of language system. En-
glish uses appropriate prepositions for this; they are bolded in example (14). In
Lithuanian the range of prepositional indexes is not so wide, but it is possible to
distinguish a similar number of Ground types, depending on its complexity. The ex-
amples in (14) illustrate how different degrees of complexity of the Ground are ex-
pressed in Lithuanian, using also non-prepositional means:
(14 a) Jonas stovėjo prie namo.
‘John stood near the house’.
(14 b) Jonas stovėjo tarp namų.
‘John stood between the houses’.
(14 c) Jonas dingo tarp medžių.
‘John disappeared among the trees’.
(14 d) Jonas Zingsniavo vidury tūkstančių demonstracijos dalyvių.
‘John marched amidst the thousands of the demonstrators’.
(14 e) Jonas brovėsi per minią.
‘John struggled through the crowd’.
SPATIAL DISTINCTIONS IN LITHUANIAN | 67
In the expressions exemplified in (14), one can define the Ground's ‘partiteness’ as
follows: in (a) the Ground is a single point, in (b) it is represented by a pair of points,
in (c) the Ground is interpreted as a set of points — more than two, but not too many,
and in (d) as an ‘aggregate, continuous mass’ (as defined by Talmy). The sentence in
(e) shows a Ground which can be characterized as a ‘medium’, viz. something more
intimately blended and homogeneous than the ‘continuous mass’ in example (d).
3.1 Biased Ground Geometry
In most of the instances described above, the Ground’s geometries are fully regu-
lar. However, it should be kept in mind that in most cases Reference Objects are
asymmetric, and that they have a directional structure and often also clearly distin-
guishable parts. Such a ‘biased’ geometry underlies a broad range of specific spatial
distinctions. Reference objects with distinguishable parts usually group them into
opposed pairs. One can easily distinguish objects with one such pair (usually this will
be a ‘front-back’ or ‘top-bottom’ opposition); a more typical model is a three-pair,
cube-type object (e.g., a building), which has also a left and a right side. Expressions
referring to such an object may localize the Figure as being in physical contact with
the Reference Object, as in:
(15) Ant dešinės pastato sienos yra žibintas.
“There is a streetlight on the right wall of the building’.
Another kind of expressions places an object in the direct vicinity of a biased part
of the Ground:
(16) Dwiratis yra prie pastato užpakalinio įėjimo.
“The bike is at the back entrance of the building’.
The third type of expressions contains information on the Figure as being located
at a specified distance from the defined part of the Reference Object, as in:
(17) Telefono būdelė yra dešinėn nuo neseniai nudažytos pastato pusės.
“The phone booth is to the right of the freshly painted side of the building’.
As we can see, a classification of spatial expressions locating the Figure with ref-
erence to defined parts of the Ground may be carried out according to different crite-
ria; in the above examples, the criterion of distance is involved.
Biasing of the object’s parts is not the only kind of asymmetry that can be observed
among Reference Objects. Some of them have also biased directedness. Opposite
directions are often set by an axis linking a pair of opposed, asymmetric parts (like a
queue, for instance, whose direction is determined by the axis linking its head and its
end). In some cases one is able to describe direction on the basis of certain properties
of the object without referring to any specific part of it, as in the frequently quoted
68 | KRZYSZTOF MALESA
example of a river, whose direction can easily be established though its biased parts —
source and mouth — are not referred to in normal use. The river is, of course, a pecu-
liar case, as it is an object of nature. Such natural points of reference, among which we
may number the Earth itself, are regularly used for structuring space and play a cru-
cial part in cognition processes. Thorough research in this field would certainly yield
interesting results.
4. THE COGNITIVE POINT OF VIEW AS AN
ALTERNATIVE TO STRUCTURAL DESCRIPTION
The main purpose of the foregoing parts of this paper was to give a brief, general
introduction to cognitive description, and to prepare the ground for practical appli-
cation of this method in Lithuanian. We will now turn to particular instances and our
purpose will be to present an alternative to the traditional structural approach, and
to look for a possibility of describing spatial relations in new, more convincing way.
The compound prepositions mentioned in the introduction can serve as a good ex-
ample here, as the academic grammars describe them in a way that is more than
laconic.
The academic grammars of Lithuanian do not offer any classification of the com-
pound prepositions. All they provide is concise information about the morphological
structure of compound prepositions and one-sentence definitions of their meaning,
followed by lists of examples selected in a random way from Lithuanian literature
and dialectological archives. The authors of the definitions referred to here do not
recognize any differences between peculiar types of spatial cognition and they postu-
late, particularly for compound prepositions, the existence of synonyms, although
one can see that the examples they list do not represent a homogeneous class. The
inadequacy of this approach will be briefly illustrated below in connection with two
particular spatial expressions, iš už and iš anapus ‘from behind, beyond’, in order to
show the advantages of the research tool provided by cognitive science, which enables
to describe such pairs of preposition in more exhaustive way.
All compound prepositions of Lithuanian consist of two basic prepositions, each
of which has its own meaning. The first component, consisting of the prepositions iš
and į“, is common to all. It carries ablative or ablative meaning and does not have
any influence on the way in which Reference Object is conceptualized. More impor-
tant information is stored in the second part of this peculiar structure — in this
particular case, in the prepositions už and anapus. All the differences that may be
observed among the examples are related to the second preposition, which distin-
guishes the Ground from the spatial scene and determines the meaning of the whole
phrase. Thus, one should first of all study the way Reference Objects are conceptu-
alized, and on the basis of the results gained from this, describe analogous differ-
ences connected with compound prepositions, which in this specific case include ab-
lative meaning.
The compound preposition už anapus can be treated as pleonastic and is not dealt with in this study.
SPATIAL DISTINCTIONS IN LITHUANIAN | 69
Among the uses of the prepositions už guoted in the academic grammar and
Lithuanian dictionaries, one can single out at least three kinds of phrases in which už
cannot be used interchangeably with anapus. The first is illustrated in (18):
(18) Nuskintą rūtos šakelę Akelaitis uzkiso uz kasos jaunesniajai Balsytei.
“Akelaitis stuck the rue twig he had picked behind the younger Balsyte’s plait’.
This instance assumes direct, physical contact between the Figure (rūtos šakelė)
and the Ground (kasa). In addition there is another necessary criterion — the primary
object is supported by the secondary object. These conditions, connected with certain
topological features of both objects, which are relatively small and are both within
sight, exclude the use of the preposition anapus in this example.
The second instance contains information on a certain distance, which, once mea-
sured off, marks a virtual border beyond which the action described by the verb takes
place:
(19) Gyveno jisai uz kokios mylios, valdžios miškuose.
‘He lived some mile away, in the government forests’.
In this example a certain border is introduced to mark the Ground by means the
preposition už. As was the case in (18), it is not possible just to change the preposi-
tion to anapus. This is conditioned by certain geometrical properties of the Refer-
ence Object (mylia) which does not have opposed front and back sides, so that one
cannot speak of its ‘other side’. For this reason the preposition anapus is excluded
here as well.
The last example that which will be used here with the aim of presenting the situa-
tions reserved for the preposition už is sentence (20):
(20) Greitai jie uzbégo uz krūmų, nusileido pakalnėn ir dingo.
“They quickly ran behind the bushes, descended a hill and disappeared’.
In this particular case the preposition už, additionally supported by the prefix už-,
indicates certain reference space which is immediately adjacent to the rear part of the
Ground. The Figure is localized within this volume of space, and due to certain topo-
logical features of the Ground, it is no longer visible to the speaker’s eye. The prepo-
sition anapus happens to be used in similar instances, but the phrase uzbégo anapus
krūmų applied in this concrete example would sound quite odd. Anapus is more ap-
propriate when applied to the description of another kind of Reference Objects, viz.
larger elements of a landscape or borders set by Nature; moreover, apart from the
geometrical properties of the Ground, distances described by anapus are, in most
cases, considerably greater, e.g. anapus upės, girios ‘beyond the river, the forest’.
The three instances cited above show situations in which the prepositions už and
anapus, described as synonyms in Lithuanian grammar, cannot be used interchange-
ably. This is conditioned by certain slight differences between the geometrical fea-
70 | KRZYSZTOF MALESA
tures and the localization of the Reference Objects indicated by the prepositional
phrases. This way of conceptualization also determines certain differences between
the ablative eguivalents of these prepositions. As said above, the first part of the
compound preposition contains information on how the activity is oriented with re-
spect to the reference space (in this case it has ablative meaning. i.e., it describes an
activity or movement which starts in the Reference Space and is aimed away from it).
All the remaining information, including all the properties of the Ground, is stored
in the second component of the preposition. Thus, certain differences existing be-
tween non-compound prepositions are preserved when compound prepositions are
created. The reference space indicated by the phrases does not change, only the direc-
tion of the activity changes. Thus, if the meaning of prepositions už and anapus can, in
some cases, be grasped in different ways, the corresponding ablative phrases iš už and
iš anapus cannot be described as synonyms either, as they were described so far in
structural approaches.
The above remarks were meant to give a general idea of the advantages the cogni-
tive approach offers in investigating spatial relations and the way they are reflected
in language. Cognitive research into the conceptualization of space as reflected by
Lithuanian spatial expressions will no doubt partly confirm the results obtained for
other languages, such as English, but a study focusing specifically on the Lithuanian
material will certainly yield new insights into the way language conceptualizes space;
on the other hand, its will also contribute to a more adequate grammatical and lexico-
graphical description of spatial expression in Lithuanian.
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Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.
Krzysztof Malesa Gauta 2003 03 24
Uniwersytet Warszawski
Katedra Językoznawstwa Ogolnego i Baltystyki
Krakowskie Przedmiešcie 26/28
PL-00-927 Warszawa
[email protected]