Polish equivalents of spatial at

  • Authors:
  • Iwona Knaś

  • Affiliations:
  • Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

  • Venue:
  • Prepositions '06 Proceedings of the Third ACL-SIGSEM Workshop on Prepositions
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This paper explicates how English and Polish select different aspects of a spatial situation to express coincidence or proximity. Spatial relations verbalized by different senses of at in English are reflected primarily by means of w, na, przy and u in Polish. First, at is presented as conceptualizing the relation of coincidence or proximity with the whole Landmark (LM) when it is conceived as a point. Then, the Polish prepositions are investigated -- how they differ with respect to the specific part of the LM that is involved in a topological relation. Although the prepositions are available to the speakers of the respective languages to render different types of relations, their senses overlap in a complex way.