Semantic Analysis of Prepositions Læ and Wæ in Gurani Kurdish: A Cognitive Approach

The present research explores the semantics of two prepositions in Gurani Kurdish, i.e. “læ” and “wæ”. Our approach is cognitive semantics and we particularly use the principled polysemy model (Tyler and Evans, 2001, 2003; Evans and Tyler, 2004a, 2004b; Evans, 2004, 2005, 2006) that suggests clear criteria for determining both distinct senses and primary (or prototype) sense of spatial prepositions. The findings of the research show that the primary sense of læ is “beginning, source or origin” while that of wæ is “receiver or target”. The semantic network of læ has three clusters of senses – i.e. metaphorical, inclusion and comparison- with sixteen distinct senses. The semantic network of wæ includes five distinct senses without any cluster. The findings also confirm the efficiency of this model’s criteria for determining and classifying the distinct and primary senses of prepositions.