| Keywords [eng] |
Kognityvinė lingvistika, prielinksniai, semantika, polisemija, figūra, fonas, teisinė kalba, pranešimai spaudai, Cognitive linguistics, prepositions, semantics, polysemy, Figure, Ground, legal language, press releases |
| Abstract [eng] |
Following the principles of cognitive linguistics applied in studies on prepositional semantics, this paper aims at carrying out a profound analysis of the meanings of two English prepositions, in and on, focusing on (1) their usage in the legal language of the European Union and (2) their translation from English to Lithuanian. The press releases of the Court of Justice of the European Union were chosen as the most appropriate source for this analysis, during which two drawn hypotheses were checked. The first is that in the legal language of the European Union the senses of the chosen prepositions in and on will be more frequently abstract than concrete due to the abundance and importance of abstract objects or ideas existing in the European Union law. The second is that due to the same reason, regarding translation from English (SL) into Lithuanian (TL), the analysed prepositions will not be rendered by the use of Lithuanian prepositions and other translation patterns will appear. During the present study, based on types of Figure and Ground (Talmy 2000; Ungerer and Schmid 2006), as well as their geometric and/or functional relationships, several concrete and abstract senses of in and on are identified. Physical container (as the central sense) and Position in space, both being the concrete senses of in, and Abstract container, Position in time, Inclusion in social constructs and State or situation, manifesting the abstract senses of the preposition, illustrate the first set of findings. Both Physical support (as the central sense) and Position in space are the concrete senses of on, while the senses in a non-spatial domain include Abstract support, Position in time, Effect or the affected, Specification or cover and Mode or method. Finally, during the translation analysis, the translation patterns of both prepositions when rendered from English (as the source language) into Lithuanian (as the target language) are identified, and the congruence of the chosen prepositions between the two aforementioned languages is taken into account. The most frequently applied patterns when translating in were the use of Locative and Instrumental cases as well as the formation of a participial construction. The use of such translation patterns as Dėl (relating to) + the Genitive case, the Dative case and the Accusative case were the most frequent in the translation of on. |
