Radial Categories of Persian Preposition /be/ within the Framework of Cognitive Semantics with Emphasis on Shahnameh Ferdowsi

Preposition /be/ is one of the most widely used prepositions in Persian with a variety of meanings. The purpose of the present descriptive-analytical research is to study the radial categories of /be/ within the framework of Cognitive Semantics with emphasis on Shahnameh Ferdowsi. The data have been collected from one of the stories of Shahnameh titled "Bijan and Manijeh". This research aims to study the radial categories of semantic network of this preposition and also its semantic changes. For this purpose, the Tyler and Evans′s principled polysemy approach (2003) were used. Findings indicate that /be/ has been used with a frequency of 789 in total of 631 verses, so that its different meanings are systematic and has been placed in coherent semantic network in radial form. Ferdowsi has used its "affixation" meaning as a prototype meaning with high frequency. All other meanings such as "to address","assistance","causation" and "association" have been placed and used around its prototype meaning. Ferdowsi is also used of some distinctive meaning of /be/ out of its semantic clusters.