preposition

Since learning of prepositions is considered one of the challenging areas of language teaching and learning and some researchers believe that these meanings are created randomly and the only way to learn them is to memorize these meanings, the present study tries to use the Cognitive lexical semantics approach to obtain the semantic network of the preposition "be" and then provides a coherent content to teach the multiple senses of this preposition in various structures and contexts. Also, in this research, the features of the curriculum of teaching prepositions with a cognitive approach are presented and a textbook focusing on prepositions is proposed. The educational content compiled for this preposition was taught to two classes of 15 female intermediate Farsi learners, in such a way that for the experimental group, a lesson was prepared with a cognitive approach, but in the control group, the lesson was taught in a traditional way. Then, in a test, the understanding and application of various concepts of the preposition "be" were measured. The obtained results show that the experimental group performed better than the control group. These results show that such content and lesson plan, which is based on the visual schema of prepositions, helps a lot to understand and learn the multiple senses of prepositions in the form of a radial category.

Prepositions play a significant role in language as they join words and phrases in a sentence. prepositions have traditionally been seen as unpredictable, implying that the best way to learn them would be through rote learning. Cognitive approach in the other hand, argues that the distinct meanings associated with a particular preposition are systematically related in principled ways, which may have important ramifications for second language instruction.
One of the challenges facing cognitive semanticists is to explain how polysemy is formed, because in this view, it is assumed that linguistic categories are basically no different from other types of categories and are organized by the same general cognitive mechanisms. Based on this approach, sub-concepts branch off from the meaning of the prototype. The semantic network for a lexical element can include several different meanings that are related to each other and each of them may have different meanings. Also, the semantic network predicts the emergence of concepts that are part of the main or secondary meanings. The process that connects these primary and secondary meanings is called chaining (Evans and Green, 2005: 332-333).
Language teachers and researchers (e.g. Selce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999) have found that learning prepositions poses major challenges for language learners. One of the reasons for this is that it is difficult to describe the meaning of prepositions. In addition, prepositions have wide and complex meanings (Tyler, Muller, & Hu, 2011); Even the best dictionaries and grammars offer multiple meanings of prepositions, mostly arbitrarily. Traditional grammars have shown the meaning of prepositions are unrelated to each other (Bloomfield, 1933; Frank, 1972; Chomsky, 1995); As a result, memorization is often suggested as the best way to learn the different meanings of prepositions.
Tyler and Evans (2003: 45-47) propose criteria for determining the prototypical meaning of prepositions, which in their research are considered as criteria for determining the primary meaning within the semantic network:A: Earliest attested meaning
B: Predominance in the semantic network
C: Use in composite forms
D: Relation to other prepositions
E: Grammatical prediction

The research was conducted in four stages. At first, we extracted the meanings of the preposition "be" and investigated them. In the second step, we found the prototype meaning of the preposition by the criteria of Tyler and Evans (2003), and drew its semantic network. In the third stage, we developed a material for teaching this preposition. In the fourth stage, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the cognitive approach in teaching the Persian prepositions, we selected 30 virtual intermediate level Persian learners of Qom State University, 15 of whom were selected as the experimental group and were taught cognitive educational content, and the other 15 were selected as the control group and were taught prepositions in the traditional way. At first, the students completed a questionnaire related to the level of familiarity with the Persian language, in order to eliminate heterogeneous samples from the experimental and control groups. Next, both groups participated in a pre-test to ensure that their language level was not above or below the intermediate level. Then, the control group was taught the preposition "be" in the traditional way, while the teaching of these prefixes was done to the experimental group in a cognitive way. Then, all Farsi learners participating in the research took part in the post-test and the obtained data were analyzed. The independent variable in this research is teaching Persian prepositions based on the cognitive linguistics approach and the traditional approach, and the dependent variable is learning the concepts of preposition "be".

In order to investigate the effect of using the cognitive approach in teaching the preposition "be", in the learning process of Persian students, a sample lesson designed to teach the various concepts of this preposition was used in Qom State University. In the pre-test, the experimental group had an average score of 17 and the control group had obtained an average score of 17.13. The experimental and control groups obtained almost similar results in the pre-test. After teaching the various meanings of the preposition "be", a post-test was conducted to measure the understanding and application of the various concepts of this preposition, by Persian students of two groups, and the resulting data were analyzed. In this test, the highest score of the experimental group was 20 with a frequency of 6, and in the control group, the highest score was 19 with a frequency of 1. The lowest score in the experimental group is 18 with a frequency of 4 and the lowest score in the control group is 16 with a frequency of 3. According to the calculations, the average scores in the experimental group was 19.13 and in the control group was 17.20 and the standard deviation in the experimental group was 0.83 and in the control group was 0.94. According to the obtained results, it seems that the experimental group performed better than the control group, and the performance of the subjects in this group was somewhat more homogeneous. To compare the average score of the test, the two experimental and control groups, from the t-test It was used independently. The use of this test requires checking the normality of the distribution of test scores in two groups. Due to the non-significance of the Kolmogorov Smirnov test (0.77) and the result of the Kolmogorov Smirnov test (0.151), it was determined that the data of the test has a normal distribution and the use of independent t-test is allowed. In the t-test (P=0.05), a significance level of less than 0.05 was obtained, which indicates the significance of the difference between the performance of the two experimental and control groups. Because the higher the value of t, it indicates the non-randomness of the obtained findings. The t value of 6.24 with a degree of freedom of 28 indicates that the difference between the scores obtained in the control and experimental groups was significant and the hypothesis of the effectiveness of the cognitive teaching method of the preposition "be" was confirmed.
In this research, in order to check the validity of the form and content of the test, 5 experts in the field of teaching Persian language to non-Persian speakers were consulted and they evaluated the test as suitable in terms of appearance and content. Reliability was obtained from the method of dividing the test into two halves to measure the reliability of the test, and then the results of the two tests were compared with each other and the correlation coefficient of the two was determined through the Pearson method. Considering the correlation coefficient of "0.838" and the P value of "0", it can be concluded that the test has an acceptable correlation. In the next step, with the help of the Spearman-Brown formula, the reliability coefficient of the whole test was obtained, which was equal to "0.91", which indicates the appropriate reliability of the test.

The first goal of this theoretical research was to examine the suffix "be" based on the approach of cognitive semantics and determining the meaning of that using the criteria suggested by Tyler and Evans (2003), finding the various meanings of this preposition, specifying the prototype meaning and drawing its semantic network. The second goal of this research was to develop a cognitive material to teach the concepts of this preposition "be".
Based on the test results, using cognitive approach to teach the concepts of prepositions can be effective and has a significant impact on the process of learning the different concepts of the prepositions in the learners` mind.
Accordingly, It seems that a cognitive educational material for teaching the various concepts of prepositions should have the following features:
To cover the concepts in the semantic network as much as possible in different textures.
To emphasize on the primary spatial meaning of the prepositions.
to start teaching of preposition grammar by presenting the various concepts in the semantic network in a meaningful process with a particular order of teaching more physical concepts first and objective concepts next.
Content arrangement should be in such a way that the learner can understand the potential reason of formation of more abstract applications and can relate abstract concepts to their daily experiences, understand the various content in a unified way, understand the various contents in a unified way, and not to be obliged to memorize all the meanings of the prepositions to use them in different contexts.

Polysemy is one of the most controversial arguments in lexical semantics. Some disagreements between linguists are derived from the consistency or dynamicity of the lexical meaning and the ways for determining distinct definitions of a conceptual unit. These conflicts become more critical in declaring the various concepts that prepositions represent because apart from concrete concepts, prepositions represent a wide variety of abstract ones. Due to proposing a modified version of practical principles in determining distinct meanings of polysemous words, especially prepositions, the principled polysemy theory by Tyler and Evans (2001 &2003) in the cognitive linguistic approach is an efficient method for explaining the polysemy. In this method, the primary and distinct meanings of prepositions are determined by means of obvious and defined principles, after that, all concepts are depicted in a semantic cluster around the primary meaning and form the semantic network.Studying the research literature has shown that despite the wide usage of /bær/ (on), whether as a preposition or in the structure of various nominal and verbal compounds, no independent research has been done about its semantic implications yet. In addition, while most ofthe semantic studies have a synchronic approach, the evidence of this research is not only based on the usage of /bær/ (on) in contemporary Persian but in historical Persian.In this study, the polysemy of /bær/ (on) is studied based on cognitive lexical semantics with the method introduced by Tyler and Evans; called principled polysemy, and the purpose is determining the core meaning, displaying the semantic network of/bær/ (on) and scrutinizing the role of spatial and non-spatial elements in forming the peripheral concepts.

This research is descriptive-analytical, and the data was studied from the principled polysemy theory point of view. The Dehkhoda lexicon and the Sokhan dictionary were selected as corpora for choosing raw data. Because the Dehkhoda lexicon proposes some examples of historical usages for any entry and the Sokhan dictionary covers the sample sentences in Modern Persian, these two sources complete each other and have relative comprehensiveness. After choosing corpora, the examples of using /bær/ (on) as a preposition in each corpuse were categorized, and they were evaluated and criticized in terms of the structure and accuracy of definitions. Next, by applying the principled polysemy and considering the history of /bær/ (on) and its recent application, the primary meaning of this preposition was determined. For finding the radial categories at first, the diverse and scattered meanings of /bær/ (on), which were pointed out in two dictionaries, were conceptually categorized. In the next step, the mechanism of perception of the mentioned meanings was explained according to the theory of principled polysemy, along with historical and contemporary evidence. Finally, the semantic network of /bær/ (on) was drawn using the analyzed data.

Among the words of a language, prepositions are semantically more complicated in comparison with other word categories because they have a more pronounced grammatical function than the lexical function. In the history of the Persian language, from ancient Persian to now, /bær/ has had a prepositional meaning and has played numerous grammatical and semantic roles. In this paper, the polysemy of the preposition /bær/ was investigated using the principled polysemy theory of Tyler and Evans(2003).The primary meaning of /bær/ is “above” and “on”. The trace of this meaning is apparent in all concepts expressed by /bær/, derived from the primary meaning. All of these meanings form a semantic network around the primary meaning. The distance of peripheral concepts from the center of the network depends on the mechanism of their derivation. Some mechanisms like abstraction, changing the relationship between landmark and trajectory and focusing on each segment of configuration elements of proto-scene play an efficient role in creating the radial categories. There are six radial concepts for /bær/ as a preposition. “Causality” is one of the radial categories of /bær/ results from the abstraction of its primary meaning. In creating this concept, the focus is on the function of trajectory. The next radial category represents “duty and responsibility”, which is non-spatial and abstract too, but it is the result of focusing on the position of the landmark. Another member of the radial categories of /bær/ is “confrontation and opposition”. Abstraction, de-spatialization and emphasizing conceptual spatial relation between the landmark and the trajectory, creates this radial category of /bær/. “Accumulation” is the next radial category around the primary meaning of /bær/, created by abstraction and iteration of the conceptual spatial relation between the landmark and the trajectory. In addition, emphasizing this recent relation is the main point in shaping this concept. “Concomitance and companionship”, which is the consequence of changing the relationship between landmark and trajectory, and is the result of paying attention to the conceptual spatial relation between the landmark and the trajectory, is the fifth radial meaning of /bær/. The last concept that this preposition conveys is “conformity and compatibility”. Both mechanisms of changing the relationship between the landmark and the trajectory and in the next stage, abstraction and de-spatialization, have influenced the primary meaning and created this radial category. In this concept, the new concept relies on concentrating on the trajectory. As we expected, all the distinct meanings of /bær/ interact with the proto-scene of this preposition and result from the expansion of this spatial structure.Out of the six distinct meanings we listed for /bær/ (on), four results from the process of abstraction and de-spatialization of the primary meaning. Abstracting and de-spatialization of the primary meaning is a process started in Ancient Persian, when / bær/ had a partial tendency to express the concept of "based on, according to", in addition to "above and on" and in each era, its function and consequently, the number of the peripheral concepts that it represents has increased. So that in Modern Persian, scholars such as Khanlari, Anvari, and Givi have given up to ten different meanings for this preposition, which in other dictionaries also grow to twenty. According to the principled polysemy theory, the distinct meanings of a word should be independent of the context in which they are used and independent of the semantic influence of adjacent lexical elements. Considering this principle, regardless of the context-dependent meanings given in the dictionaries in the entry of /bær/, the context-independent meanings, except the primary meaning, semantically overlaps with one of the six radial concepts stated for /bær/.Considering the efficiency of the principled polysemy theory of Tyler and Evans in determining the polysemy of prepositions, which is semantically one of the most complex categories of language, it can be a suitable basis for writing a dictionary and compiling a comprehensive and accurate list of words of a language.

Using the Principled Polysemy theory in determining the primary meaning and radial concepts of /bær/ (on) has shown that “over and on” is the primary meaning of /bær/. Following some mechanisms such as abstraction, changing the relationship between the landmark and the trajectory, and focusing on each segment of configuration elements of proto-scene, six distinct meanings have been formed for /bær/, which are: 1- causality 2- duty and responsibility, confrontation and opposition 3- accumulation 4-concomitance and companionship 5- conformity and compatibility. Changing the relationship between the landmark and the trajectory and abstraction of the primary meaning are the main mechanisms in forming the radial categories in a way that four of these six distinct concepts, i.e., causality, duty and responsibility, confrontation and opposition, as well as conformity and compatibility, are the result of abstraction and non-spatialization of the primary meaning. Accumulation and companionship originate from changing the relationship between spatial elements, i.e., the landmark and the trajectory.

Due to the vital role of prepositions in Persian sentence structure, they are considered among the most frequent words in this language. Hence, teaching these words to non-native speakers of Persian is one of the important aspects of teaching Persian as a second language. This study attempts to investigate preposition errors made by Arab students learning Persian based on the theory of error analysis. To conduct the study, 50 Arab speakers learning Persian as a second language in the Center of Teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad participated in the study. The gathered data from their composition writing are divided into three categories of errors in terms of their origin to “inter lingual”, “intra lingual” and “ambiguous”, and into three categories in terms of their type including “substitution”, “deletion” and “addition”. The findings of the study revealed that the highest percentages of errors in terms of the origin are attributed “intra lingual” errors (79.50%) in terms of the origin and “addition” prepositions (65.36%) in terms of their type. In this study, statistical description of errors generated by Persian learners are also provided based on which policy makers can improve textbooks and teaching methods in this field.

An indirect object is a grammatical form in Persian. Indeed, it is a propositional phrase, and the relationship between the verb and its complement is only built up by a preposition. When it comes to Russian, the indirect object is not necessarily a prepositional phrase and it is governed in two ways. First, the verb directly governs the grammatical case of the object. Second, the governing of the object’s grammatical case is carried out by the preposition. The indirect object has a special feature as it plays a number of semantic roles for the message in the sentence. As far as Russian is concerned, the grammatical case is the criterion for recognizing meaning. In other words, a specific grammatical case is used for each semantic role. In the present study, we identified ten semantic roles for the indirect object in Persian, which are recipient, malefactive, beneficiary, stimulus, result, source, theme, goal, instrument and audience. Each indirect object which holds one of these semantic roles—according to the meaning of its verb of course—can be expressed in Russian through the following methods 1). Accusative case with no preposition needed; 2). Accusative case with prepositions needed “на”, “в” and “про”; 3). Dative case without or with prepositions “к” and “по”; 4). Genitive case without or with prepositions “от” and “у”; 5). Instrumental case without or with prepositions “за” and “с” and 6). Prepositional case with preposition “о”.

The language of the Qur'an is a language understandable to all and is organized in a structure consistent with human cognition. The use of the letters Jar and the adaptation of their spatial-sensory concept and their experience with the abstract and spiritual realms is an example of the adaptation of the language of the Qur'an to human thoughts. The present article seeks to examine the metaphorical role of prepositions in explaining the doctrinal concepts related to prophecy by descriptive-analytical method and using the basics of cognitive semantics. Findings show that conceptual metaphors, pictorial metaphors play an important role in expressing the authorities of the prophets. In some verses, God has expressed the doctrinal statements of the prophets using the prepositions and the cognitive meaning of the metaphors derived from these words. In such a way that the role of these cognitive mechanisms in representing concepts such as role model, infallibility, superiority, being dear to God, protecting people's faith and divine knowledge and in general tasks, attributes, teachings, is undeniable and mainly for conceptualizing such Concepts of human existence, objects, vessels and objects and structures and basic concepts such as light, force and obstacle, building and high directions, front, center are used. To use the physical nature of the human mind to explain the doctrinal statements of the prophets.

Among simple prepositions, we can name ɂaz ‘from’; be ‘to’; daɹ ‘in’; baɹaye ‘for’ and ba ‘with’. The simple prepositions are the most frequent language unit when we search different corpora. This frequency confirms the importance of these language units. Prepositional phrases appear in the sentence either as an argument or as an adjunct. The purpose of this research is to classify the simple verbs with the object of the preposition /be/ in Persian language. This research has used Levin's approach in categorizing English verbs. Levin believes that the similarity of syntactic behavior and syntactic valence of verbs can lead to semantic similarities. In this paper, to investigate this issue, about 200 simple Persian sense verbs that have the object of the preposition /be/ were selected and extracted from the Syntactic Valency Lexicon for Persian Verb (gathered according dependency grammar), and then classified according to Levin's approach. The classification of the data indicated that these verbs could be grouped into seven semantic categories. It is obvious that achieving these semantic classes is useful for language learning and teaching the verbs as the core of the sentence.

Zarrinqaba-nameh is one of the longest epic poems after the Shah-nameh, which has mentioned the heroism and wars of Zarrinqaba (the granddaughter of Rostam), Rostam, and his family during the kingdom of Kay-khosrow and prophecy of Solomon's prophethood. The poet and the time of its composition are unknown, but its corrector has considered it to be related to the Safavid Era (10th century AH) based on evidence. One of the most important stylistic features of Zarringaba-nameh is the use of "prepositions" in new and unique meanings and functions, which underlie its linguistic features. Thus, Zarrinqaba-nameh could be considered a unique and unrivaled work among the texts of Persian literature from this perspective. Some prepositions, such as "from", "in", and "to", in Zarinqaba-nameh not only have been used in their unique meanings, but also have shown different roles in the syntax, e.g., two prepositions coming together for a complement, novel and unusual prepositions in simple and compound prefix verbs, and prepositions coming before an object.

The goal of this paper is to study the different functions of “ magar ” in Persian , based on data from texts in the past twelve centuries . The corpus of this study includes 24 books . Three hundred and sixty sentences using “ magar ” were extracted from the corpus . It was concluded that they have two main functions : interrogative function and non - interrogative function , each with its own syntactic features . However, in these 12 centuries, the interrogative function of "magar" shows an increasing trend and its non - interrogative function has been decreasing . It also seems that in the written texts, "magar" is passing from the non - subjectification stage to subjectification .

From the end of the second century AH to the fifth century, rhetorical terms appeared. These terms were derived from research in the Qur'an and Arabic texts. Initially, the terms common among rhetoricians were limited to the beauties of the word, such as metaphor, simile, brevity, repetition, prostration, and genius. Over time, other rhetorical terms emerged. For the first time, Ibn Mu'taz in 296 AH spoke about the flaws of rhetorical techniques. Rhetoricians have considered the weakness of writing or the weakness of speech as one of the disruptive factors in speech. In Asrar al-Balaghah, Jorjani mentions for the first time the use of pre-dhikr and considers it as one of the types of weakness of authorship. Pre-reference is a kind of pronoun mutation in which the pronoun is placed before the reference. Some semantics have included pre-dhikr as in the field of Persian language like other rhetorical terms and, like the ancients, have considered it as a function of weakness of authorship and others have not considered pre-dhikr as inappropriate for Persian poetry. In this article, by expressing evidences of Persian poetry, it is tried to examine the preposition and it is shown that the preposition is one of the stylistic features of Persian poetry, and in cases where there is no drop in the verse, and by moving the pronoun and pronoun reference If the meaning of the verse is correct, it can be said that Azmar before mentioning is one of the beauties of Persian poetry.

The present paper is a semantic survey of prepositions "/barāyē/ and /tā/. The aim of study is to identify schematic meaning of the mentioned prepositions with a diachronic view in order to investigate semasiological changes of meaning as a result of their secondary grammaticalization. To achieve this goal, the meanings of each of the prepositions were gathered from Sokhan and Dehkhoda dictionaries. After analyzing prepositions' meanings, associative image schemas with the meanings have been mentioned. Prototypical and peripheral meanings of prepositions have been determined using Evan and Tyler's (2003) suggested method. After proving polysemy of the mentioned prepositions; semantic network of each preposition; is drawn. Finally, polysemy of the investigated prepositions has been explained with regard to imagery schemas as the result of secondary grammaticalization. The innovative aspect of this research is that the polysemy and secondary grammaticalization of prepositions had not been studied with regard to conceptual schemas associated with their semantic functions before.

Deletion of a preposition in Holy Quran is one of the examples of stylistic diversity and the techniques of disobedience from linguistic rules. Holy Quran utilizes this technique that is rich in rhetorical and semantic achievements base on the situation in which the speech is expressed. This research studies the structural rhetoric of preposition omission in some verses of Holy Quran using an analytical descriptive method. The goal is to find an explanation for the effect of proposition deletion on the meaning of the versus. We show that the deletion creates a gap in the phrases by disobeying the linguistic rules, which in turn leads to breaks. However, the deletion enriches the meaning of the phrases and makes them coherent. This guides the skilled audience to interpret multiple meanings. In the whole process, the audience fills the gaps and that in turn makes the phrases consistent while having multifaceted interpretations. The audience, in fact, assumes two or more prepositions and more possibilities. We show that most of the examples of Deletion in Holy Quran can lead to multifaceted interpretations through the assumption of several possible rules for the word deleted in the phrase.

Jarr, as a preposition, is significant among the other particles since it functions as a connector between the verb and noun in a given sentence; thus, the mere connection between the verb and the noun as well as its type depend on the precise definition of Jarr. Early grammarians took Jarr as a connector between the verb and the noun, but the recent ones, routinely, define it as words that modify the noun following it. This difference in definition has brought many debates regarding the number of Jarrs and their semantic analysis. This study aims to investigate different definitions of Jarr suggested by grammarians through a descriptive-analytic method to answer the following questions:1. What are the labels and etymology of each Jarr? 2. Which definition matches more with the function of Jarr in Arabic? 3. What is the categorization of Jarr based on the agreed-upon definition? 4. How many Jarrs are there in Arabic and how many of those are used in the Quran? The study aims to find a precise definition of Jarr to be matched with its functions in Arabic, particularly Quran, so that it could be taken as a scientific criterion to evaluate grammarians' ideas on definition, number, categorization, and function of Jarr. The findings of the study suggest that:1. The comprehensive definition of Jarr which is structurally and semantically matched with the general Arabic texts, particularly Quran and the Imams' narratives, is the one suggested by the early grammarians. Therefore, Jarr means to connect, convey, or make transition in the meaning of the verb and some words (e.g. derivatives, nouns derived from verbs, and noun clauses) to nouns, and nous to verbs. Based on this definition, Jarr, addition, and connection (Ibn Ghayim's expressions) have overlap, and Khafdh functions as the e'raab for these prepositions. 2. Based on the definition, Jarr should have at least two features. Firstly, it should connect the verb prior and the noun after it. Secondly, following the noun after it, it modifies the verb coming before. In other words, it belongs to the verb coming before. So, each preposition which does not have these two features cannot be taken as Jarr. Moreover, as the prepositions are not independent, and Jarr and Majroor belong to the verb coming prior, it is imperative to analyze the modifier and modified altogether to understand the meaning of Jarr and Majroor, meaning that the mere analysis of the preposition is not enough. 3. Khafdh is a noun to "Matta, Ki, La'al, Shaz". The use of Lola for the target pronoun and the connected Majroor makes the clause influent and reduced. So, even if it is a preposition, it cannot be included in the Jarr prepositions. "Hasha, Ada, Khala, Rab, Manz, and Maz" are nouns, too. 4. The Jarr prepositions, therefore, are "b, t, l, w, an, fi, men, ela, hatta, ala'a" all found in the Quran. 5. As Jarr prepositions need to be belonged and they function as means of transition for verbs, assuming them to be redundant is paradoxical and meaningless

The element of language is one of the social phenomena that is constantly changing and metamorphoses. The Persian (farsi) language has not been far from these changes and metamorphoses. One of these and metamorphoses is preposition changing. In this research we examined the prepositions, kinds and its uses in the poetic language of the prominent poets of the samanid’s era and also we compare it with today’s standard language. The examination of the witnesses shows that in mentioned era, simple and compound prepositions have been used. These prepositions from the shape, structure and semantic point of view are of great diversities. Moreover, a prepositions are used in this era that in following eras are reduced or completely obsoleted. Also there are some terms (complement and preposition) in this era that some grammar writers have considered them as compound preposition; while it seems that these terms are a combination of « simple preposition» and «complement».

Iranian learners of the Russian language face numerous problems when learning the Russian grammar. One of these problems is the complexity of Russian prepositions, especially spatial and temporal prepositions in comparison with the Persian language. Since the task of the teacher is to facilitate the learning environment, to improve the learning process and to classify the content of learning from a logical point of view, it is necessary, first of all, to identify students' errors and study the causes of their occurrence. At the next stage, the teacher needs to think about ways to overcome these mistakes. The main objective of this study is to classify the frequent errors of Iranian students who use the spatial and temporal prepositions of Russian by identifying the reasons for their occurrence and the ways to overcome them. The corpus of the present study consists of 150 students of the middle stage of Allame Tabatabaei University. Research methodology is experimental –descriptive. The results of the study show that the most frequent errors in the application of spatial and temporal prepositions are associated with the interference between the native and the studied language, and the possibility of using simple Russian prepositions with several cases. Strategies are also being shown to reduce errors, among which the most important is the introduction of the subject “teaching prepositions” into the program of teaching Russian in Iran and teaching students to think in Russian, rather than translating Persian thoughts.

Having a look at preposition in Persian grammar sources, we find out that these five comprehensive prepositions "to, with, on, from, in" have multiple grammatical behavior. It means they are sometimes an independent word and make complement clause and sometimes they are a part of another integrated whole and don’t make it. If the word is followed by is a complement clause, it would be whether a common complement or a proper complement. Proper complement is the same as object and is only used with transitive verb which must have object ,but common complement is not considered as object at all and is used with different kind of verbs like: transitive, intransitive, active , passive, linking or state and action verbs. If the preposition does not complement clause, it will be a dependent word or a part of a compound verb or a verb clause. It also can make compound adjective or adverbial and adjective clauses.

Language, like a living being, changes through time and studying of its characteristics in its present form without considering diachronic changes is incomplete and insufficient. In this article, the semantic roles of the preposition “’az” in Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, Parthian, Dari Persian and New Persian languages have been studied by using grammatical data in these languages and their glossaries. In Avestan and Old Persian “’az” has appeared in the form of hača/hačā and is derived from the root “hak-”, i.e., “to accompany?”. In Middle Persian and Parthian, it has remained as “az” and “až” respectively. In Vedic Sanskrit, this preposition has been used in the form of “sačā ” to refer to the semantic role of accompaniment. But, in ancient Persian languages, there is no evidence of encoding the semantic role of accompaniment with “hača/hačā”. In Avestan and Old Persian languages, “hača/hačā” has implied different semantic roles like source, separation, cause, method. Also, in Middle Persian and Parthian languages, the functions of “az” and “až” have been preserved while some other semantic roles like instrument, nature, comparison, and part-whole relationship have been encoded. In addition to its functions in previous periods, in Dari and New Persian, “az” has the role of encoding other semantic roles, and in the encoding of some semantic roles like instrument and nature, it could be substituted with the preposition “bâ”

Aim of the Research: Looking at the attitude of semantics, the present study aims to investigate some of the most practical prepositions, such as /læ/­, /wæ/, /­wægærd / and /­wæpi­/ in Kalhori Kurdish within principled-polysemy approach (Evans & Tyler, 2004a, 2004b; Evans & Green, 2006).
The Methodology of the Research: The nature of the method of this study is analytic-descriptive and its type is corpus-based. The Selected corpus has been obtained from interviews with the speakers of this dialect from Kurdish language, and their originality have been approved completely that this study has focused on some samples for each distinct meaning due to the limitaition of its pages.
Research Question: This research has done to explore and determine the distinct meanings of the prepositions /læ/­, /wæ/, /­wægærd / and /­wæpi­/ in Kalhori Kurdish within principled-polysemy approach. Thus, the author has represented them in a semantic network seperately.
Research In this regard, the research results show that the prototypical meaning of the preposition /læ/ coming to the speaker's mind immediately is "from" having eighteen distinct meanings and five semantic clusters, such as; "contrast cluster", "collocation cluster", "polysemy cluster", "time-space cluster", and "metaphoric cluster" in its own semantic network. with conducted careful studies, it was found that, in some cases, Kalhori speakers use the preposition /læ/ in the place of /wæ/ in those contexts with those meanings interchangeably, but in addition to these meanings the preposition /wæ/ is used in two other different meanings, i.e; the meanings "by" and "to", in which the preposition /læ/ cant be used. So, /wæ/ has twenty one distinct meanings. The prototypical meaning of the preposition /wægærd/ is "with" having eleven distinct meanings and three semantic clusters, such as; "collocation cluster", "contrast cluster" and "metaphoric cluster" in its own semantic network. The prototypical meaning of the preposition /wæpi/ is "to" having five distinct meanings and two semantic clusters, such as; "contrastive cluster" and the meaning "about" in its own semantic network.

Among the conducted studies of accents and dialects, particles have been a neglected area for researchers. Regarding the importance of this syntactic topic, the current study tries to investigate and analyse simple prepositions and conjunctions in Layzangani dialect. Besides, this dialect has been explored by interviewing old speakers of the village, reviewing the frequent local songs, sayings and challenges. As much as possible, the usage of particles mentioned in the contexts has been illustrated. Useful findings of this study are: First, particles such as ‘az’ (from), ‘beh’ (to), ‘dar’ (in), and ‘bar’ (on) have no place in this dialect and the speakers of this dialect feel them being as foreign issues. The reason, indeed, is that these speakers often use one particle in place of several used ones; for instance, they use ‘a’ instead of ‘az’, ‘beh’, ‘dar’, and some other particles. Another finding is the frequent usage of the particles such as ‘a’, ‘xoδe’ (with), and ‘ta’/’t⒠are different from the ones in standard Farsi.

Language learning is one of the most complex issues in teaching a foreign language. Prepositions having different meanings in different contexts are mostly problematic issues for both language instructors and non-Persian learners. Although prepositions are frequently used in Persian textbooks and daily conversations, learners fail to incidentally acquire them and often show low achievements in using them correctly. The strategy commonly employed by language instructors is teaching the multiple senses of prepositions by rote learning (Song, 2013). Rote learning lacks comprehensive analysis of different concepts of prepositions. Hence, students have to memorize them merely by repetition. In contrast, Cognitive Linguistics (CL) suggests a different approach to teaching prepositions that may have a strong impact on the methodologies of foreign language teaching and meaningful learning (Song, 2013). Compared to traditional approaches, cognitive linguistics offers an account of language structure that is arguably more comprehensive (Langacker, 1995). It opens up a new perspective of the CL-inspired meaningful learning approach on language teaching demonstrating the unification of the integrated model of text and picture for comprehension (the ITPC model). It also integrates the new knowledge with related prior knowledge in the cognitive structure of the learner mind (Ausubel, 2000). In addition, the ITPC model illustrates thoroughly how information is processed through each stage of the cognitive procedure. Prepositions are considered as having different meanings that are presented in a very systematized and related way in this model that in turns provides a fruitful basis for explaining the use of prepositions in different contexts. Thus, it seems to have a great effect on the methods of foreign language teaching and learning (Song, 2013).
The present study focuses on the preposition, "Az" which is frequently used for presenting spatial meaning. So, the aim of the study is to provide an instructional syllabus based on cognitive semantics perspective for teaching different senses of this preposition to non- Persian speakers (in intermediate level). This preposition has 26 different usages as illustrated in Farhange Sokhane Anvari (2003). We have determined its prototype and different meanings based on this dictionary and the criteria of Tyler and Evans (2003). For this purpose, some sentences and phrases including this preposition were selected from non-Persian speaker’s textbooks in Jameat-almostafa center of Mashhad. According to Farhange Sokhane Anvari (2003), the first usage of this preposition is to show the “source” as far as the spatial and metaphoric concept is concerned. In this study, we introduced a suggested model of teaching in its abstract spatial usage. The proposed instructional method is an integrated model of text and picture (by PowerPoint and poster) for teaching semantic structure of the preposition, regarding its central and other meanings. The use of images, containing sensory and perceptual experiences of students, can make meaningful relationship between their new and previous knowledge. The findings open up an effective perspective in teaching and meaningful learning of this preposition for non-native speakers.
Theoretical Framework: Cognitive linguistics is one of the new schools of Linguistics derived from new cognitive sciences. In their interactions with environment, human beings perceive one thing in terms of another thing metaphorically. This is known as “conceptualization” in which abstract meanings are discovered based on their physical counterparts. We assume that a preposition designates a conceptual spatial relation between a TR (trajectory) and an LM (landmark), which constitutes an abstract spatial scene. Conceptual content can be abstracted away from specific spatial scenes, giving rise to a more abstract representation, which is called a proto-scene. A proto-scene is associated with prototype of a particular preposition. According to Langacker (1987), an image schema includes a trajectory, a landmark, and relationship between the trajectory and the landmark. Thus, prepositions are able to extend the spatial senses to their abstract senses by metaphorical mappings.
In this study, first, according to the criteria of Tyler and Evans (2003), prototype and different meanings of preposition “Az” were selected from Farhang Sokhan (Anvari, 2003). Then, some sentences and phrases containing the preposition were investigated by random sampling in the textbooks of Jameat-Al-Mostafa center in Mashhad. Finally, a suggested model was introduced
for teaching the Persian preposition "Az” to non-native speakers, based on the domain theory of Langacker (1987) and the notion of image schemas (Lakoff & Johnson, 1987). The proposed instructional method is an integrated model of text and picture (by PowerPoint and poster) for teaching semantic structure of the preposition, regarding its central and other meanings.
At the end of each session, the related exercises were given to the students including multiple choice, filling the gap, and matching.
Based on the cognitive approach, the prototype meaning of preposition “Az” is the “source” in which trajectory (TR) runs away from landmark (LM). In the present study, the focus was on high frequency concepts, such as “source” and “part of whole”. In the first session, an interesting prologue was used to attract students. Since the image schema of ”Az”, is “source”, explain it’s spatial and abstract meanings. In the second session, another concept of it, “part of whole” is explained for spatial and abstract meanings. Finally, students should do the exercises.
Conclusion and Suggestions: This study focused on a cognitive approach to teaching Persian prepositions to non-native speakers. In cognitive approach, learning has more effects on knowledge acquisition in constructing cognitive schemata. In this approach, students can integrate new knowledge with relevant prior knowledge, so learning is meaningful and satisfying. In the present study, an instructional model for teaching two different concepts of preposition “Az” in the spatial and abstract domains are presented. Future studies are required to investigate other prepositions as well as their different meanings.