Cornish Prepositional Colligations

Paper presented by Dr. Jon Mills at the Skians 2016, Cornish Language Research Network Conference, Penryn Campus, Tremough, Kernow
1st October 2016
Abstract
The core meaning of Cornish prepositions is locative. In other words, they locate something in space or time. However this is not their only function. Prepositions also colligate with other parts-of-speech to form multi-word lexical units in which location may not be denoted. Instead the preposition has two functions: a syntactic function and semantic restriction. The syntactic function concerns both the structure of the prepositional phrase and the function of the prepositional phrase within the clause. Semantic restriction of prepositional colligations is exemplified in these prepositional verbs: mires dhe ‘take care of’, mires orth ‘consider’, mires rag ‘seek’, and mires war ‘observe’. These prepositional colligations at first present a difficulty to the learner, since they do not translate word for word with their English equivalents. Instead the learner must learn the colligation as a single lexical unit. Prepositional colligations include the following types: noun+prep., prep.+noun, adj.+prep., prepositional verb, phrasal verb, and phrasal preposition verb.