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In article <5434@cs.Buffalo.EDU>, dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) writes:
> 
> GROUP A: "IN", the CONTAINER image-schema
> 
> He lives in Mexico
> He lives in Wyoming
> He lives in Manitoba
> He lives in Whatcom County
> He lives in Clarence, New York
> He lives in Seattle
> He lives in Central Park
> He lives in Yellowstone Park
> He lives in Los Padres National Forest
> He lives in the parking lot
> He lives in his back yard
> He lives in the new subdivision
> He lives in my neighborhood
> He lives in the Mission school district
> He lives in a cornfield
> He lives in Fred's pasture
> He lives in a meadow
> 
> 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"
> He lives on Quilchena golf course
> He lives on the highschool football field
> He lives on a tennis court
> He lives on his front lawn
> He lives on Henry's farm
> He lives on Frank's ranch
> He lives on Peter's land
> He lives on his own property

    Well, this isn't a linguistic answer, but I have an intuitive
feeling that it's idiomatic whether a geographical noun takes
"in" or "on".

    One thing I do note is that the "in" list nouns seem to have
more abstract borders.  The concept of "Mexico" is abstract as are
all political entities.  But the military base or campus has a more
concrete sense of separateness from its surroundings.  The political
border seems more arbitrary or invisible, something you couldn't
imagine in its entirety all at once.*  But "parking lot" is
about as concrete as you can get, yet it takes "in".  :-)

    In learning other languages, it's often necessary to memorize
the idiomatic choice of prepositions.  On the other hand, I think
there's also a vague classification which permits one to "get a feeling"
for the preposition to be used.  In your example, the use of "in"
with political entities is a vague rule.  And the use of "on" with
nouns that elicit an image of the ground is a vague rule.  But words
like "parking lot", "cornfield" and "meadow" don't fit the "on" rule
and words like "base", "campus" and "reservation" don't fit the "in"
rule.

    Perhaps they're just exceptions, or perhaps there are more
rules.  For instance, forests, cornfields, pastures and meadows all
elicit an image of tall things growing.  (A pasture usually has
trees and a meadow has weeds.)  Even the parking lot has cars among
which we feel slightly hidden.  So there's the feeling of being
"within" or "in" the forests and fields.  And in the backyard it's
very cozy and private as if we're hiding in our private little
world.  (in the world - abstract; on the earth - physical) 

    The golf course usually has trees, but is also thought of as
flat and fairly clear, whereas the forest is not.  The "in" nouns
are more three-dimensional.

    As for "base" and "reservation", although they are political
entities in a sense, there's a feeling that they are more physically
bounded by lines drawn on the earth.  I know it's not logical; it is
based on feeling, so that's why it's vague and hard to analyze.

    Also note that some nouns can take either preposition, perhaps
depending on context or the preceding verb.  "My car is in the
parking lot."  "The ball bounced on the parking lot."  "The horse is
in the field."  "The ball bounced on the field."

    In the "on" phrases, the bottom plane of the three-dimensional
space was emphasized due to the context.

    I have an anecdote based on the choice of prefixes that is
similarly based on vague feeling rules rather than logical order.
When our company began issuing badges for us to wear, there was a
ceremonious ritual about taking off the badges to go to lunch.  A
new word was needed, so, in typical American fashion, so we made one
up: "de-badge".  (Of course "re-badge" was used while reentering the
building.)

    But there was one exception.  A friend for whom English was a
second language said "un-badge".  It sounded wrong.  There's some
amorphous rule, some fuzzy logic that makes "de-badge" sound right
and "un-badge" sound wrong.  It may be a vague semantic rule or it
might be simple euphony; "un-badge" is more effort to pronounce.

    Well, the rules exist, but are idiomatic because they're vague
and based on spatial image or emotional feeling, rather than on
things that rules are usually based on such as number, ambiguity
prevention, logical order.  Plus the rules can be in conflict,
whereas that isn't true for most grammatical rules.

    It probably depends on cultural points of view what's important
in setting up vague rules, or the rules may have derived from
anecdotal history or a joke that an ancestor once made that caught
on and was generalized.

*(The Navajo language makes a vague distinction in locational and
directional words between places that are within eyesight or
imagination and places that are too far to see or too big to
imagine.)
-- 
Krista A.