Er ordbøker lingvistiske nok? Om preposisjonssemantikk og ein grammatisk basis for ordbogsartiklar

Abstract

As for monolingual dictionaries, it is not easy to create good definitions of prepositions since they are highly polysemous and apparently seem to lack a common denominator. However, in the spirit of Bouchard (1995), I argue that each preposition has one basic linguistic meaning (Grammar semantics) independently of context, interpretation, pragmatics and world knowledge – which covers all its usage (its Situational semantics). The advantages of pursuing such a system are numerous: A well-founded separation of polysemy from homonymy, a more homogeneous and predictable dictionary entry, and clear criteria for what counts as the semantics expressed by the preposition itself and what is given by its surroundings. I mainly discuss the Norwegian prepositions i ‘in’, på ‘on’ and med ‘with’.