The annotation of preposition senses in German
Antje Müller, Claudia Roch, Tobias Stadtfeld, Tibor Kiss · 2012
While there is general agreement that prepositions (especially simple prepositions) are highly polysemous, there are two competing views on how polysemy might occur: the derivational view assumes that simple prepositions derive from and retain the basic meanings of adverbs, such as temporal, spatial or modal relations. In line with this, it has been assumed that preposition senses can be derived from primordial protosenses, typically spatial senses (cf. Tyler and Evans 2001). Alternative proposals on polysemy, however, suggest that different senses of words only share their phonological form and have emerged arbitrarily and independently at some point in time (cf. Croft 1998). We favor the second approach and assume a relational view on prepositions.1 Accordingly, prepositions are not specified as bearing a prototypical meaning. Instead, we assume a set of (sometimes arbitrary) relational preposition senses that are associated with preposition lexemes. Consequently, we avoid speaking of spatial prepositions, etc. and prefer to speak of preposition senses and their mappings to preposition lexemes. Of course, it cannot be denied that most simple prepositions in German have spatial interpretations. But neither can it be denied that almost as many prepositions show temporal or conditional interpretations, while other senses are distributed to a lesser degree among prepositions. For instance, the interpretation PRESENCE is expressed only with mit (‘with’) and ohne (‘without’) in German.