🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5434@cs.Buffalo.EDU>, dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) writes:
> 
> GROUP A: "IN", the CONTAINER image-schema
> 
> He lives in Mexico/Wyoming/Manitoba/Seattle/Los Padres National Forest/...
> He lives in the parking lot / back yard
> He lives in the new subdivision /neighborhood

	[ etc.. ]
> 
> GROUP B: "ON", the PLATFORM image-schema
> 
> He lives on the Fort Lewis military base
> He lives on the Stanford University campus
> He lives on an Indian reservation
> He lives on parcel "B"

	[ etc.. ]

	I've always enjoyed this phenomenon.  One simple thing that bears 
being mentioned is that a simple change in perspective will get you from 
the PLATFORM to the CONTAINER schema.  So if you're standing ON your front
lawn (platform), then when viewed from above, you will seem to be "IN" a
set of borders (the edges of your lawn).  I.e.


                 -----                            --------------------
                 |   |              becomes       |                  |
           |     |   |     |                      |     ------       |
           -----------------                      |     |    |       |
                                                  |     ------       |
                                                  --------------------

when viewed from above:  Prototypical, central ON becomes prototypical,
central IN.  This perspective transformation is intriguing because in
some cases (e.g. the above) it yields a conceptualization which is tagged
with a lexical item distinct from that of the original conceptualization,
while in other cases it does not.  An example of this second case is 
"The picture is hanging ON the wall."....  the prototypical ON scenario
pictured above gets perspective-shifted, and the word stays the same;
this is one of Lakoff's image-schema transformations.  Of course, it's 
not the same shift in perspective in the two cases.....

	Given this, it's interesting to note that many of the words that
take "in" in David's list above are geographical entities commonly encountered
on (!) a map, which is most naturally viewed from above:  e.g. "She lives IN 
Shasta County / California / Brighton / England."

	But: ON a map...  yeah well, so that just goes to show that it's 
nowhere near a complete answer.

Terry Regier				regier@cogsci.berkeley.edu
Computer Science, UC Berkeley