Semantics of the English preposition “over” in the syntagmatic aspect based on publicist texts

Abstract

This research aims at studying the semantics of the English preposition “over” in English journalistic texts. Existing scientific theories, describing the principles of conveying the meaning of movement in an English sentence, indicate the important role of the interaction between the verb, preposition and other elements of the sentence. Their relationships fall within the scope of syntagmatics and paradigmatics. We determined the semantic connections of the preposition “over” in terms of conveying the meaning of movement and path. The terms “trajectory”, “landmark” and “path”, introduced by researcher R. Langacker, were used as the basis for constructing a pattern of interaction between prepositions and verbs in a sentence from the point of view of semantics. The analysis of the semantic component is carried out using image-schemes. The semantic field, created by the preposition “over”, was studied separately and in-connection with verbs of motion, including the trajectory of motion, the meaning conveying motion, the interaction of the trajectory with the reference point and the horizontal extension. We have provided examples of sentences containing the preposition under study and their semantic analysis.