Abstract

Spatial relation is a basic existent relation in the objective world, and in English, prepositions are the important spatial terms to describe spatial relations people perceive. Using Langacker’s trajector-landmark theory from cognitive grammar, this paper attempts to analyze the cognitive process of the six main spatial meaning of English preposition across based on the entries collected by the Collins Dictionary, with data from the the Leeds Collection of Internet Corpora. The findings can be concluded: (1) The use of across should include at least a tr and a lm, and the lm cannot be covert. (2) The spatial relations across contains could be divided into simple atemporal relation and complex atemporal relation. (3) The tr in some dynamic relation of across sometimes will represent some kind of schema, such as source-path-goal schema.

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