Geoff's idea is interesting, but I think it's focused on the most
prototypical usages of prepositions: when they are optional modifiers
of either nouns or clauses. When you look at the wider distribution of
prepositions, things are more of a mess.

I was just looking through Merriam Webster's Dictionary. Many of the
prepositions are wildly ambiguous/polysemous in terms of their
meaning. The best example is "of", but most are similar. They have
multiple senses and sub-senses, and it's all highly idiosyncratic and
chaotic.

More importantly, it's often the case that a given preposition is
present in a sentence not because of it's meaning, but because it is
required by some other preceding word ("dine on", "come on", "example
of" "eat up"). Imagine trying to explain the "meaning" of the
prepositions in these three examples. I don't see a way. I don't think
a Lakoff-style metaphorical analysis sheds any light on these
patterns., because there's no metaphor in these examples. Or if you
think there is a metaphor, then your definition of metaphor is getting
stretched quite thin.

--Dan Roth
Contra Costa College

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:06 AM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Geoff,
>
>
>
> You got it.
>
>
>
> Herb
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:56 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>
>
>
> Herb -
>
> I'm a little lost in the lingo, but if I'm translating your message
> propertly, you're saying that some of the same prepositions can also create
> "when" meaning.  Here is my list of prepositions used to create "when"
> meaning: before, after, during, in the middle of, past, prior to, until,
> since, as, at, upon, for,on, about.  I never really took the time to see
> which ones are duplicates, but let's take an obvious one like "in."  If I
> ask a student to create "when" meaning using "in," I would expect something
> like the following, "We'll be leaving in an hour." A sentence creating
> "where" meaning would look something like this: "I left my keys in the car."
>
>
> Geoff Layton
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:28:11 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Geoff,
>
>
>
> I’m being a little pedantic, but of the approximately 50 spatial
> prepositions you list, about 30 can be used temporally.  In your teaching do
> you ever deal with the similarities in how English treats spatial and
> temporal states and relationships?  This is another way grammar and the
> creation of meaning are related.
>
>
>
> Herb
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:50 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>
>
>
> Whether the list consists of seven or seventy, the issue is not the number
> of prepositions or the frequency with which they're used but how they're
> used in a sentence to create meaning. For example, here are (most of?) the
> prepositions that communicate "where" meaning: in(to), out (of), above,
> below, across (from), next to, through, throughout, far (from) on top of,
> at, inside (of), outside (of), along (with, side of), by, between, upon,
> under, over, underneath, beneath, about, before, after, ahead of, behind,
> near(by/to),around, in back of, in front, beside, beyond, among/amid, apart
> (from), against, away (from), up (from), down (from), to, from, with,
> within, on(to), off (of), with, without, within, toward, at, opposite
> (from).
>
> Identifying prepositions by how they create meaning (there are far fewer
> prepositions, for example, that create "when" or "why" meaning) is far more
> helpful to students than just providing a "list of favs" or even worse
> having them memorize a definition.  Picking any one of the "where"
> prepositions will lead to the creation of a unique piece of "where" meaning
> - the obvious examples being the opposites - creating a sentence using
> "under" to create WHERE meaning will produce a sentence with totally
> different meaning than one using "over." The obviousness of this should not
> obscure the fact that grammar is being used to create meaning - writing in
> the context of grammar.
>
> Geoff Layton
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:16:42 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Most lists of prepositions I've seen have some 70 words in them.  How about
> this list:  at, by, for, from, in, to, of, on, and with?  As I recall,
> Charles Fries discovered that those nine account for over 93% of all
> prepositional phrases.  (The fact that several of them can also function as
> other parts of speech is another (sticky) matter.)
>
>
>
> Ed Schuster
>
>
>
> On Jul 29, 2010, at 9:38 AM, Geoffrey Layton wrote:
>
>
>
> Dan - Just got your message and want to give a thorough reply - but right
> now, I just want to comment on your reference to Joseph Williams' definition
> of a prepositon as being "easier to list than define." This is exactly the
> same solution proposed by Colomb et al in their revision of Turabian's
> "Student's Guide to Writing College Papers." If so critical a grammatical
> construction is so difficult to define other than through its usage, then it
> seems to me that this solutions should apply to other issues of terminology
> as well - define them through usage, and usage is writing, or as I like to
> call it, "Writing in the Context of Grammar."
>
> Geoff Layton
>
>
>
>> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:45:59 -0700
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions - AND PREPOSITIONS
>> (SEALING WAX-MAYBE)
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Geoff:
>>
>> These are really excellent questions. I think that more teachers need
>> to first consider what their overall objectives are before they decide
>> what and how much to say about grammar. It's unproductive to debate
>> the place of grammar in the teaching of writing if you haven't first
>> decided on the larger pedagogical goals of your writing class.
>>
>> By default, I try and say as little about grammatical details as
>> possible in my class (freshman composition), because it quickly gets
>> complicated, many students quickly get bored, and I tend to digress.
>> But there are times I find it necessary to discuss the details of
>> grammar, and it's impossible to do that without defining terms and
>> laying out a common meta-language for the class.
>>
>> One alternative strategy for defining terms would be this: Instead of
>> defining what a preposition or an auxiliary verb "means" or "does,"
>> you just list the words that are the prototypical members of that
>> category, and allow students to rely on their innate grammatical
>> competence to figure out the rest.
>>
>> If you try to do the latter, you can easily get mired in talking about
>> semantics (prepositions do this..., or prepositions mean this... in a
>> sentence). In my experience, these discussions can get very messy once
>> students start asking questions and you start looking at the gory
>> details of actual sentences. Students also get very confused when you
>> try to explain syntactic items based on their semantic properties,
>> which is the traditional way, because the match between syntax and
>> semantics is chaotic.
>>
>> If you do the former, you skip all these pitfalls, save some
>> class-time potentially, and allow students to rely on their
>> grammatical intuitions. It may be less satisfying, but I think it's
>> pedagogically sounder in most cases. I find it very parsimonious.
>>
>> Does my alternative strategy make sense? It's something I have been
>> toying with in my classroom. It's what Joseph Williams does in his
>> glossary of grammatical terms at the back of Style: Lessons in Clarity
>> & Grace. I'm curious what people think.
>>
>> --Dan
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 8:12 PM, Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> > "The time has come," the Walrus said,/ "To talk of many things:/ Of
>> > shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--/ Of cabbages--and kings--/ And why
>> > the
>> > sea is boiling hot--/ And whether pigs have wings --/ And when you can
>> > split
>> > the auxiliary and the verb."
>> >
>> > How might teaching what students already know (i.e., negative
>> > contractions
>> > and rules about splitting things) be of any use in teaching writing? In
>> > other words, if no native speaker would say, "Why do not you like her?"
>> > why
>> > bother to teach that "Why do you not like her?" is the correct
>> > uncontracted
>> > negative and "Why don't you like her?" is the correct negative
>> > contraction?
>> > I bring this up because I have the same problem with teaching things
>> > like
>> > prepositions and their objects. For example, if no native speaker would
>> > say,
>> > "I put the pen the table" or "I put the pen on," then why bother to
>> > teach
>> > prepositions or their objects?  Similarly with other grammatical
>> > terminology
>> > - I sort of get the "we need to know what to call things" argument, but
>> > I
>> > find that teaching students what to call things frequently seems to take
>> > precedent over teaching them what to do with something that they're
>> > already
>> > familiar with but by no means have achieved any kind of control over.
>> > That's
>> > the point when I become more receptive to the "teach no formal grammar"
>> > position and start quoting "The Walrus and the Carpenter."
>> >
>> > Geoff Layton
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> > Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:46:55 -0700
>> > From:  Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
>
>
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