One of the greatest challenges in teaching this course is helping students overcome the anxiety toward the study of grammar that they sometimes bring with them. One of the greatest rewards is watching students move from anxiety to curiosity. This does happen* We have been privileged to see it | Chapter 21 Prepositions giving such abstract definitions to ESL students is that the definition is often more difficult to comprehend and apply than the form itself Sometimes a more helpful alternative is to use concrete examples rather than definitions. It is time to keep the promise we made in Chapter 3 to return to the concept of prototypicality. You will recall that prototypical examples are the best examplars of characteristics that the members of a particular category have in common. Thus for example a robin to North American English speakers at least would be a more prototypical bird than a penguin. Relating this observation to our present concern we note that many prepositions prototypically deal with locating objects in space. While often their meanings are extended beyond space experience has shown that anchoring the meaning of prepositions in spatial relationships is the first step to helping students learn to deal with areas where the meaning is more abstract. Associating spatial schemata with prepositions where possible also helps teachers avoid a common pitfall which is to define a preposition using other prepositions. Therefore we begin by delving into the underlying semantics of common prepositions in the spatial domain. Locating Objects in Space Locating an object in space involves two or more entities. For example in our first example with in above the two entities arc Stephanie and room. Taylor 1993 notes that the relationship between the two entities is inherently asymmetrical in that one entity is selected for foregrounding while the other entity serves as a background. The former has been variously referred to as the figure or trajector and the latter is called the ground or landmark. The analysis below comes from Dirven 1993 .e According to Dirvcn at on and in are the basic and most general place prepositions at denotes place as a point of orientation Meet me at the corner. on denotes physical contact between trajector and landmark
