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T 17 LOCATION IN SPACE. POSITION, DIRECTION AND DISTANCE., SYNTACTIC…
T 17 LOCATION IN SPACE. POSITION, DIRECTION AND DISTANCE.
- TO LOCATE SOMETHING IN SPACE means to establish a spatial reference for a state or an action we refer to in an utterance.
- represents a semantic notion which has a variety of realizations on the syntactic and lexical levels in the English language.
- responds to questions like "Where?" and "How far?". Such expressions are understood thanks to: knowledge of linguistic structures and vocabulary, as well as their understanding of the spatiotemporal framework in which communication takes place.
- Space is one of the coordinates that frame all (in)animate beings. It can be defined as an extent of a surface or 3D area. The extra-linguistic and universal concept of space is reflected in English in the existence of forms which refer to positions, directions, or distance (like here, there, further away).
Any use of language whose meaning depends at least in part on the situational context is called deixis (which concerns the way in which some expressions can only be interpreted in terms of their relationship with the speaker, from whom deixis emanates). Deixis can be explicit or not (e.g. the choice between come and go for direction), so deictic categories include all possible ways of referring to contextual referents.
On the other hand, spatial deictics can be found in expressions which do not actually refer to spatial relations (e.g., we were close to death – the meaning is temporal rather than spatial).
ADVERBIAL SPACE CLAUSES
- In a subordinate space clause, the nexus is where/wherever if there is no antecedent in the previous clause, or where/wherever/in which, if there is a previous element that the place connector can refer to (They stopped where / wherever they saw a light).
- Several temporal subordinators may have primarily a spatial meaning in descriptions of scenes when the scenes are described dynamically in terms of movement from one place to another (Take the right fork when the road splits into two).
4. DISTANCE
- notion which refers to the separation in space. It can be expressed by noun phrases of measure such as a foot, a few yards, ten miles, a long way, etc. These phrases can modify a verb of motion (He ran several miles). They can also precede and modify an adverbial of place (They live a long way away).
- Distance can refer to static location (How far does he live?). Dynamic location is also possible (How far did he run?).
- After some verbs, noun phrases of measure are indeterminate between direct object and adverbial (He jumped ten feet). Unlike objects, they do not generally allow passive, and they allow adverbial questions.
- There are some idiomatic expressions which express distance in a comparative or metaphorical way (We are just a stone’s throw = a very short distance)
POSITION refers to the place where something is located. Expressions referring to position answer the question Where?
- Some authors distinguish static position and dynamic position
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES for position: choice governed by the way we see an object, whether we see it as a point in space, as a line, as a surface, as an area, or as a volume. They can be distinguished as: at, on in types.
- We can often use different prepositions with the same noun, but in such cases the meaning will be slightly different.
- For towns and villages, either at or in is used, depending on the point of view.
- For buildings or groups of buildings either at or in can be used, but at is preferred when the building is thought of as an institution rather than in physical terms
- At is used instead of to when what the following noun refers to is being treated as a target
- Many prepositional phrases of place are used in more abstract senses, which have a metaphorical relation to their basic sense
- At-type prepositions: The place is seen as a point. (We stayed at home, at the entrance, around the information desk).
- On-type prepositions indicating a line: The place is seen in terms of length: (There are lots of flowers along the riverbanks).
- On-type prepositions indicating a surface: The place is seen in terms of length and width (I have posters on my room walls). On is also used for public transport, or just to mean "attached to" (There are lots of apples on my garden trees).
- In-type prepositions indicating an area. The place is some ground or territory enclosed by boundaries (I have a house in the country and an apartment in the city).
- In-type prepositions indicating a volume. The place is thought of in terms of length, width, and height/depth (We keep the cheese in the refrigerator).
POSITION OF PLACE ADJUNCTS IN A CLAUSE: Where different types of adjuncts cluster in final position, the normal order is the following: 
process-place-time: "I was studying (process) in the library (place) the whole morning (time)."
Three other general principles apply to relative order whether within a class or between classes:
- normal relative order can be changed to suit the desire for end-focus
- clause normally comes after other structures, since otherwise these would be interpreted as adjuncts of the clause:
- Longer adjuncts tend to follow shorter adjuncts (I was studying earlier in the university library).
with a personal pronoun as subject and the verb to be in simple present, here and there are moved to initial position to draw attention to the presence of sth/sb (Here it is / There she is).
- if the subject is a noun, subject-verb inversion is normal when any place adjunct is initial (On the very top of the hill lives a hermit)
- When the object is long, the place adjunct can be moved after the verb
- Some direction adjuncts are put initially to convey a dramatic impact. They normally co- occur with a verb in the simple present/past (Away he goes)
Position and direction adjuncts can co-occur, with the position adjunct normally following the direction adjunct in final position (The children are running around -A1- upstairs -A2). One of them can often appear initially, especially prepositional phrases, to avoid a clustering of adjuncts at final position (I’m flying to India from the waterfalls in South America).
- The position adjunct can be put initially to avoid giving it end-focus - the neutral position of focus - (Upstairs the children are running around).
- A prepositional phrase may be put initially to prevent it from being interpreted as a post- modifier of the previous noun phrase (In the park some of the children are walking to the lake).
- 2 position/direction adjuncts can be coordinated (We can wait for you here or in the car). But a position and a direction adjunct normally cannot be coordinated (The baby was crawling upstairs and into his parents’ bedroom).
- When a clause has 2 adjuncts of position, only the larger place can be moved to initial position (Many people eat in restaurants -A1- in London -A2-). Initial position may be preferred in the case of a prepositional phrase that can also be interpreted as post-modifier of a previous noun phrase to avoid misunderstanding.
- A sentence can also have 2 adjuncts of direction (He came to London from Rome).The normal order of these direction adjuncts accords with the interpretation of the verb.
- the normal order of juxtaposed direction adjuncts follows the same order as the events described (They drove down the hill -A1- to the village -A2-).
DIRECTION refers to the position towards which sb/sth moves, faces, or is aimed. Expressions referring to direction answer questions formed by where and the corresponding preposition: Where to? Where from?.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES FOR DIRECTION:
- Repeated motion can be expressed by joining two prepositions with and
- A prepositional adverb behaves like a preposition with the complement omitted. One-syllable-prepositions are normally unstressed, but prepositional adverbs are stressed. Most place prepositions, correspond in form/meaning to prepositional adverbs.
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- On-type prepositions as a line (The ball rolled on to the goal line).
- On-type prepositions as a surface (He put the paper on the table)
- In-type prepositions as an area (She got into the streets).
- In-type prepositions as a volume
SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS FOR POSITION AND DIRECTION.
- Adverbs (underneath, overhead, here, there / backwards, outside)
- Prepositional phrases (in the grass, on the pavement, at the station / towards the building, out of the hole.)
- Nouns (with their complements: ten miles away; proper names: Georgia)
- Adjectives (northern, southern, distant /southbound)
- Adverbial clauses of place (where the fire had been / wherever they could find work)
- There are also verbs of placement, which very often take an obligatory expression of space: place, lay, put, and many copular verbs are also followed by adverb phrases or prepositional phrases which refer to spatial meanings. Direction adjuncts are used only with verbs of motion or with other dynamic verbs that allow a directional meaning (He jumped over the fence).
ADVERBS FOR POSITION AND DIRECTION
- USE: According to Huddleston, adverbs which are used to describe space relations, including position and direction, are considered as a peripheral class of adverbs. Their syntactic characteristics often differ from those of manner or degree adverbs which are more numerous and treated as prototypical. They are not formed by derivation from adjectives using the suffix - ly and they are sometimes obligatory in the clause pattern, unlike the prototypical adverb (with verbs of placement or direction) which require adverbial complementation (e.g., put, travel). Many adverbs can serve both to express position and direction, depending on the meaning of the verb they accompany. Adverbs commonly used for both position and direction are above, along, anywhere, around, etc. A few adverbs denote direction only: aside, backward(s), downward(s), etc.
- MORPHOLOGY: The morphology of position and direction adverbs includes the prefix a-, as in ashore, aboard for position or the suffix -ward(s) as in backward(s), outward(s) for direction, although most have nonspecific: forms, such as there, near. In formal style we find compound adverbs formed from where/there + preposition: wherein, therefrom, etc.
- SYNTAX: As their syntactic role in a clause is concerned, adverbs referring to space position or direction can act as obligatory or optional verb complementation - that is as: verb complements or modifiers. In both cases, the adverbs act as adverbials in the clause structure and the clause pattern corresponding to the examples is subject + verb + adverbial (SVA). Another pattern in which an adverbial referring to position or direction can appear as obligatory is that of subject + verb + object + adverbial (SVOA) (You can put the dish on the table). While some adverbs refer to positions or directions mentioned above, a few place adverbs, here, there, and the relative where, are pro-forms and they substitute the whole previous expression referring to spatial relations (All my friends have been to Paris at least once. I am going there next summer for the first time – there = to Paris). A special class of adverbs which are verb complements are directional adverbs (also referred to as particles) such as in, on, off, and which are commonly used to reinforce or introduce the spatial relation implied by the verb (Jack and Jill fell down).
ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS IN EXPRESSIONS FOR POSITION AND DIRECTION
- Adjectives which refer to position or direction usually appear in attributive modification of nouns (They live in a distant village).
- A special type of adjectives which mean location are those derived from place names (English coast is rugged and picturesque).
- Noun phrases thanks to their meaning also give hints about location and not only identity of something (Our destination is New York).