Semantic Analysis of Prepositions wæl, tɑ & ærɑ in Gurani Kurdish within the Cognitive Perspective

The present research explores the “wæl”, “tɑ” and “ærɑ” prepositions in Gurani Kurdish within the framework of cognitive semantics. One of the recent models in semantic analysis of prepositions is Principled polysemy model (Tyler & Evans, 2001, 2003; Evans & Tyler, 2004a, 2004b; Evans, 2004, 2005, 2006) that suggests explicit and applicable criteria for determining the distinct senses as well as the primary sense of prepositions. We aim to analyze the semantics of three mentioned prepositions, to determine their distinct senses and primary sense, and to represent their semantic networks. The results suggest that the primary sense of “wæl” is “companionship” and its semantic network contains 9 distinct senses and 2 clusters of senses. The primary sense of “tɑ” is “ending” and its semantic network contains 4 distinct senses and 1 cluster of senses. The primary sense of “ærɑ” is “for and sake” and its semantic network contains 4 distinct senses and 1 cluster of senses.