Abstrak

Kembali

This article focuses on the treatment of the spatial preposition to in English learners’ dictionaries. Few in-depth studies have been undertaken on the preposition to though it has a high frequency and a rich meaning, and both its sense differentiation and definition in dictionaries are sometimes not satisfactory. Adopting a cognitive approach, we classified the spatial uses of the preposition to into six primary groups. Evidence suggests that the dynamic ‘Unspecified Source – Path – Goal’ schema on the horizontal plane is the proto-schema of to, around which a semantic network can be organised. We then analysed some of its abstract senses, which are metaphorically connected with its spatial uses. Finally, we proposed a ‘four-tier’ model to arrange the senses of the preposition to. This study not only aims to optimize the preposition entry to for learners’ dictionaries, but to explore a new perspective from which spatial preposition entries can be made more reasonable and streamlined.