Beate Dreike

WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF

PREPOSITIONS?

1. I n “Linguistics and Natural Logic” G. Lakoff puts forward the

hypothesis “that the logical structure that is necessary for natural
language to be used as a tool for reasoning should correspond in some
deep way to the grammatical structure of natural language” (1970,
151). If I understand this correctly Lakoff seems to suggest that there
must be an equivalence of some kind between the relations that hold
between linguistic units and those that hold between the propositions in
question. This thesis rests on a t least three assumptions: firstly that
reasoning is done by means of language, secondly that there are one or
more laws underlying our reasoning, thirdly that these laws become
apparent in and through language. No attempt shall be made to
question these theses as such, but it is the intention of this paper to
point out, more clearly than has been done so far to my knowledge, that
the interpretation of the relationships between linguistic units in a
sentence is not always deducible from the logical structure underlying
it, if this study does not include the study of pragmaticfactors. This will
be exemplified through a description of some German adverbials, the
prepositions vorlhinter and the adverbs vornelhinten, whose logical
representation is extremely valuable for making it clear that the com-
mon feature of their function lies in building up a locational relation-
ship. The various interpretations of the connections set up by these
adverbials, however, become apparent and distinguishable only by a
description of their contextual and situational surrounding. In other
words: the logical relation VOR has to be distinguished from the actual
speech-function of the utterance vor. I n consequence one might then
suggest that semantics is not equivalent to “natural logic” if it excludes
pragmatics.
Some very valuable work in the field of adverbials has been carried
out by P. Teller in his paper “Some Discussion and Extension of M.
Bierwisch’s Work on German Adjectivals” (1969) where he analyses
nouns like bottom, top, side, front. Unfortunately Teller then limits him-

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 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

self to listing only the obviously most important functions of their

respective prepositions such as under, below, on top of, beside, in front of,
and altogether leaves out adverbs.
Another work of major importance is R. Bartsch’s “Adverbialseman-
tik” (1972), in which a short chapter deals with local adverbials too. By
means of an extended predicate calculus a highly sophisticated analysis
of local prepositions is given, without however disambiguating the
various semantic focuses arising out of the different contextual settings.
The same observation applies to G. S. Cooper’s “Semantic Analysis
of English Locative Prepositions” (1968), which gives a very elaborate
description of the relations set up by prepositions by means of estab-
lishing various semantic markers.
All these studies carried out are highly valuable if one keeps in mind
that, no matter how detailed the analysis may be, there are ambiguities
in everyday utterances which cannot be eliminated without pragmatic
knowledge of the actual situation in which they occur; and it is for this
reason that I am making a complementary contribution to the semantic
description of the above mentioned adverbials.

2.0. Both prepositional phrases containing the prepositions vor and

hinter and the adverbs vorne and hinten function syntactically as
adverbials which give us the spatial location of an entity with respect t o
some other object or location. (In the following the term “adverb” will
be used to refer to a form class-Wortart, whereas “adverbial” is used
for a sentence constituent-Satzglied.) Let us first look a t vorlhinter,
excluding the temporal and modal connections which can be expressed
by vor when it is combined with nouns denoting time, such as in vor 2
Tagen, vor Ostern, or with nouns denoting abstract entities, such as in
vor Fret.de, vor Angst. Here we shall only be concerned with the spatial
relation.
Prepositions such as vorlhinter are constituents of basically non-
deictic prep.phrases whose function is t o identify the location of the
objects in question. Biihler refers to “Positionsprapositionen” as
“Nennworter” (1934, 144) which give the information about the loca-
tion by naming it. Thus it is necessary that one should always have two
components: one denoting the object which is talked about and a second
component which carries the function of naming the location of the
object in question.
Syntactically prep.phrases containing vorlhinter can occur in two
positions, either as noun modifiers (= complements) as in

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 BEATE DREIKE

(1) Die Kinder sind vor/hinter dem Haus

or as sentential modifiers (= adjuncts) as in
(2) Die Kinder spielen vor/hinter dem Haus.
This syntactic distinction however is of no great relevance at the mo-
ment as the underlying structure of both these sentences is
x VOR/HINTER y
or, expressed in terms of the predicate calculus

R (x, Y)
where R stands for the two place relation which is here a locational one
and x and y stand for the two arguments brought into connection with
each other by R. R, the prepositional relation, can thus be treated as a
predicate the two arguments of which are the two correlata combined
by VOR/HINTER.
predication

argument
I
, I
predicate argument
I
X VORIH~NTER Y
As is evident from the underlying syntactic structure of the two sen-
tences the only difference between sentences (1) and (2) is in the charac-
ter of argument,. In (1) it is a simple noun argument, die Kinder, with
an inserted auxiliary verb sind, in (2) we have a sentential argument,
die Kinder spielen. The relationship which holds between argument
and argument, however stays unaffected by the choice of a noun- or
sentential topic.
From this it follows that the distinction between the predicate
functioning as adjunct or as a complement is of no great value within
this context as it doesn’t convey any information about the interpreta-
tion of the prep.phrase in question-apart from the fact that a strict
and stringent division between them cannot be drawn in any case (cf.
Lyons 1968, 346ff).
As the distinction of the prep.phrase occurring as complements or as
adjuncts does not give any information about the kind of relationship
built up by the prepositions we had better have a look at the two argu-
ments going with the preposition.
According to Halliday (160 ff) every text is organized in terms of
“given” and “new” elements, the given one serving as “topic” and
usually standing in thematic position, the new one being the “com-

S3
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

ment”, standing in rhematic position and giving us the so far unknown

information about the topic. When applying this structure to sentences
containing prep.phrases we find that in the most neutral case the first
argument serves as topic and is linked with the second argument by
means of a preposition which describes the kind of relationship between
the two arguments; consequently we have to look a t the nouns making
up the two arguments if we want to find out how to interpret vorlhinter.

2.1. Let us first try to describe the meaning of vorlhinter seen as non-
dependent on the speech-situation and look a t (1) and (2) again. I n
both sentences the prepositions describe a local relationship between
the two correlata, children and house, where the noun die Kinder serves
as the topic and sind vor dem Hauslspielen vor dern Haus serves as the
comment which here expresses the point of orientation or the location
of the children. This structure is appropriate to all prep.phrases con-
taining vorlhinter.

X Prep. Y
to;)ic vor/Linter point of drientation
comment

I n sentences (1) and (2) the expression referring to the moving and
alive entity, namely the children, is argument x,whereas the expression
referring to the less mobile and non-alive entity, the house, is argument
y as the place of location. That x should be the mobile entity and y the
immobile one is however by no means necessary. As the following
examples may demonstrate, the structure x = topic, y = location is
unaffected by the choice of nouns denoting mobile, immobile or alive
objects in x as well as in y:

(3) Das Schiff liegt vor der Kuste

(4) Der Stuhl steht vor dem Tisch
(5) Das Haus liegt hinter der Grenze
(6) Maria steht vor der Tur
(7) Maria steht hinter Klaus
(8) Das Haus liegt vor dem Park.

While (3) to (6) seem to suggest that the smaller and more mobile entity
gets related to the bigger and less mobile one, (7) and (8) clearly show
that x and y can be of the same status with respect to importance or
mobility. Even sentences like
 BEATE DREIKE

(9) Der Elefant steht vor der Ameise

(10) Das Haus steht vor dem Auto

are perfectly acceptable if they occur in a fable, a children’s book, or in

a game where toys are shifted around and a quality like mobility can be
attributed to a house.
Prom these examples it seems to follow that either neither x nor y
are mobile, or x is more mobile than y or a t least as mobile as y, or both
x and y are mobile.
And yet there are restrictions with regard t o topic and comment.
Both x and y usually have to belong in some not strictly definable way
to a common sphere of location. Even if one takes into consideration
the different psychological “world-views” (McCawley, 138) of various
speakers and hearers, a sentence like
(11) Das Haus liegt vor England
is pragmatically wrong as - apart from the fact that there is a dispro-
portion in scale between house and England-a house cannot be situated
on the water, unless it is an inflatable house washed out to sea.
I n all the sentences treated so far the relationship built up by the
prepphrase between the two arguments was one denoting closeness
which of course is relative to the size of the objects in question. A boat
lying off the shore can be twenty miles away from the land whereas
Maria cannot be further away from the door than two or three yards,
otherwise one would rather state that she is standing in front of the
house and not in front of the door. The relationship of closeness is thus
one relative t o the proportion and size x and y are suggesting. This
closeness may or may not include the factor of contiguity. I n
(12) Der Garten ist hinter dem Haus
(13) Der Stuhl steht hinter dem Tisch

x and y can either be seen as contiguous so that x begins where y ends

and vice versa or they can be non-contiguous if there is some space
between them which is of some reasonable dimension with regard to the
size of chair and table or garden and house. I n this latter case we seem
to extend the sphere of the table and the house in relation to which one
is still justified in saying that the chair is standing a t the back of the
table and the garden is in back of the house.
Thus we can state that the relationship x VOR y or, taking up the
representation of predicate calculus used before: VOR (x,y) holds if x
YA
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

is either directly contiguous or in an area contiguous with the front of

y. In analogy x HINTER y or HINTER (x, y) holds if x is either direct-
ly contiguous or in an area contiguous with the back of y.
As has become apparent from the previous discussion VOR/HINTER
are two-place predicates or predicates which take two arguments. The
logical properties intrinsic to these relationships are non-symmetry and
non-transitivity.
VOR/HINTER are non-symmetric-as opposed to a symmetric
relationship such as BY, where x BY y = y BY x, or x BESIDE y = y
BESIDE x. Under certain conditions both VOR (x, y) = VOR (y, x)
will hold if say two objects face each other, but usually VOR (x,y) +
VOR (y, x), and the two connections VORiHINTER taken together
have to be seen as converses, so that VOR (x, y) = HINTER (y, x),
if x and y are observed from the same geographical point. Their other
logical property is that they are usually non-transitive unlike a con-
nection such as x BESIDE y, but again under certain pragmatic
conditions-we’ll return to this below-transitivity can be ensured.

2.2. So far our predications have been treated as unambiguously

“naming” the location of objects or entities. This is however not the
case as vorlhinter are prepositions which make a “quasi-deicticinterpre-
tation” (Leech, 167) necessary as they include or can include the speaker
as their point of orientation, and thus can only be disambiguated by
pragmatic knowledge of the situation. The ambiguities can be exempli-
fied by the following sentence:

(14) Maria steht vorlhinter dem Auto,

which can have three different “understandings” (Zwicky 1973). Here
we follow Zwicky in using such a term to indicate simply that there are
different ways in which an expression can be understood without com-
mitting ourselves to whether the different understandings depend on
pragmatic or semantic factors.

(a) A car is an object which has a front, a back, and two sides. If Maria
is said to stand in front of the car this can be interpreted as in an area
adjacent to the bonnet. Likewise she would be standing at the boot if
she is said to be behind the car. Whether Maria faces the car or not does
not matter in this context. She can either stand with her back to the
car or facing it as in either case she can be referred to as standing vor/
hinter dem Auto. This kind of understanding would account for all other
 BEATE DREIKE

objects which have a front and a back, such as houses, bicycles, cup-
boards, paintings, television sets, flowers like sunflowers which have a
“face”, animals, and people.
According to Lyons (1973, forthc.) there are two different ways of as-
signing frontness and backness to objects: (i)in terms of ”confrontation”
of two entities which face each other, (ii) in terms of “locomotion”, or
the way in which objects usually move. All the above mentioned objects
could thus be defined in terms of “confrontation”; a car could get an
additional interpretation in terms of its moving, or “locomotion”,which
can apply even in cases where the object is symmetrical, as in the case
of a tram which is symmetrically built and where the driver si ts at either
end.
This interpretation of Maria standing in front of the bonnet or at the
boot will be called “y-intrinsic” as it is determined by the inherent
structure or locomotive potential of the denoted object in the 2nd argu-
ment.

(b) The second understanding of (14) is the “quasi-deictic” one which

includes the speaker and his orientation. I n this reading Maria is under-
stood as being on that side of the car which the speaker sees himself. I n
other words: she is between any side of the car and the speaker uttering
this sentence. Likewise she can be said to be behind the car if she is
standing on that side of the car which the speaker does not see, i.e. if
the car is between her and the speaker. On this reading again it is not
relevant whether she faces the car or not.
What has to be mentioned in addition is that if the speaker can be
included in this interpretation, so can a hearer. During a conversation
e.g. it is easily possible that the speaker refers to Maria as standing in
front of the car with respect to the hearer who at the time in question will
be at the place of the car and thus become the reference point in the
description of Maria’s location.

(c) The third understanding of (14) is one which focuses on Maria’s

facing the car or not. If she is walking around the car having a close
look at it and into it, she can be said to be vor dem Auto, as the car-
no matter which side of it-is always in front of her. This relationship
shall be called “x-intrinsic” as it is determined by the face of the x-
argument,
It has to be mentioned however that this understanding only applies
to the preposition vor and is not possible for hinter. If Maria stands with
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

her back to the car and between car and speaker she would be seen as
vor dem Auto, which means that the interpretation would be the “quasi-
deictic” one.
For the English reader attention should be drawn to the fact that
this understanding is not found with English in front of. One feasible
explanation for this can be seen in the fact that there is in German no
adequate translation for the English verb to face, so that the preposi-
tion vor plus some verb has the function of the lexical entry to face in
English.

These three ambiguities have to be taken into account whenever

argument y as the location has a front and a back. If this is not the
case such as in objects like trees, round tables, hills, lakes, only under-
standings (b) and (c) are possible. Only in these two latter readings do
we become aware of the importance of the speaker’s or hearer’s loca-
tions as the points of reference. If e.g. person A is standing on the one
side of a table and person B on the other, they both would refer to
themselves as standing in front of the table and their partner as
being behind it. This makes it obvious that vorlhinter, when not used
intrinsically, do not express absolute relationships but only connec-
tions relative to a point of reference which has to be given within the
context.
Another kind of ambiguity of basic relevance for all semantic descrip-
tion of adverbials arises out of the distinction direction or goal vs. loca-
tion, which seems to be dependent on the semantic marking of the verb
as [fdirection].
As has been pointed out by R. Bartsch (124) the subcategorization
of verbs through the selection of directional or local adverbials does not
lead to a classification of the concerned verbs as directional or static.
I n other words: the prepositions vorlhinter are neutral with respect to
the distinction direction vs. location, which only gets carried into the
sentence as a whole through the interaction of verb and case of the
prep.phrase. This can easily be shown by the following examples:
(15) Maria steht vor dem Schloss
(16) Maria lauft vor das Schloss
(17) Maria lauft vor dem Schloss.
I n (15) we have a static verb, the case following the preposition is the
dative and the information conveyed through the prep.phrase is a
merely locational one. I n (16) we find a verb of direction and a prep.-

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 BEATE DREIKE

phrase indicating the goal or destination of Maria’s “journey” (Jessen

1973, 110) and the case is an accusative. In (17) however the verb is
still a directional one, yet the prepphrase carries the dative, giving
the simple location of her walking and not the goal she wants to reach.
From this it follows that static verbs like stehen, sich befinden, sitzen,
liegen ... always carry the dative and give locational information,
whereas verbs of direction like luufen, gehen, schwimmen ... can either
be followed by the dative or the accusative and thus have a locational
or directional meaning. Furthermore problems arise out of the kind of
‘‘.journey” described if we have a directional verb followed by an
accusative. I n (16) it is not expressed whether Maria starts her walk
from within the castle and walks out of it or whether she approaches
i t from the outside and goes towards the building. This ambiguity
cannot be captured by simply looking a t the statement in its isolation:
we need the situational context in order to arrive a t the fullest possible
interpretation of this sentence.
The representation of the relationship set up by VOR/HINTER in
terms of the predicate calculus would be

(15) Maria steht vor/hinter dem Schloss

V(M, Sch) & St(M)
H(M, Sch) & St(M)
The predicate VOR/HINTER here expresses mere location. It takes
two arguments Muria and Schloss and the static verb stehen takes one
argument Maria.

(17) Maria liiuft vor/hinter dem Schloss

V(M, Sch) & L(M)
H(M, Sch) & L(M)
Here the representation, in spite of having a verb of direction, is the
same as for (15) as the connection expressed is a locational and not a
directional one.
(16) Maria lauft vor/hinter das Schloss
clearly expresses a direction, namely the goal of Maria’s walking. She
is not yet located in front of the castle but we see her in the process of
moving there. One could thus represent this statement in the following
way:
Instr(Inch(V(M, Sch)), L(M))
Instr(Inch(H(M,Sch)), L(M))

SY
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” O F PREPOSITIONS

Here the instrumentalis stands for the bringing about of the coming
about of Maria’s being in front of the castle. It takes two arguments:
(i) an inchoative which is itself a predicate with two arguments, one of
which is the location Schloss, the other one being Maria, (ii) the action
laufen. That is, it is via her walking that Maria moves into a location in
front of the castle.

3. Being aware of these ambiguities arising out of the pragmatic and

contextual surroundings of the prepositions vorlhinter one might be
entitled to question the dichotomy today usually accepted between
“intensional meaning” vs. “extensional meaning” (Dahl 1971, 4) or
“meaning” vs. “sense” (Dahl 1972, 3). It is unfortunate that Dahl uses
the terms “meaning” vs. “sense” in order to refer to what is more
frequently in the tradition of philosophy of language called “sense” vs.
“reference” in analogy to Frege’s “Sinn” vs. “Bedeutung”. Taking over
the more traditional terminology I speak from now on about “sense”
where Dahl speaks about “meaning” and about “reference” where Dahl
uses the term “sense”.l I n this framework the “sense’) is considered
constant-no matter when or where this sentence is uttered-the
“reference” of a proposition or its truth-value is determined by the
points of reference. Within this context however this distinction be-
comes subject to serious doubts. In the predications containing the
prepositions vorlhinter above described the ambiguities do already
appear to occur on the level of “sense” and a division into ambiguities
on the “sense”-level vs. those on the “reference”-level cannot be drawn
with precision, if at all. This seems to be due to the fact that pragmatic
knowledge is necessary for the interpretation of any sentence contain-
ing one of these adverbials. Also, one interpretation depends on a
pragmatic factor-the position of x and y relative to the speaker-and
the other on a purely semantic one-whether y has an intrinsic orienta-
tion or not.
It would be possible to avoid having to attribute this ambiguity to a
mixture of pragmatic and semantic factors if one were to treat the
three understandings as resolving an indeterminacy and say that the
prepositions are not ambiguous semantically but simply indeterminate,
i.e. that the distinctions are relevant to utterances rather than senten-
ces. However it is clear that prepositions are not indeterminate in the
I trust that no confusion arises in turn out of this use of the term “reference”
which has already been employed in tho preceding text as part of the locution
“point of reference”.

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 BEATE DREIKE

sense that expressions like last year are indeterminate, since indeter-
minacy of such items is resolved pragmatically by simply specifying
the time of locution. With vorlhinter this is not the case. Even if one
specifies the place of speech one is left with two or three possible under-
standings.
One might of course argue that the “sense” of these prepositions is
location plus their logical properties, such as non-symmetry and non-
transitivity and their “reference” basically deictic, extended by imput-
ing an intrinsic orientation to objects like cars, houses, people. This is
however not satisfactory as one is then left with the problem that
vorlhinter-as they have the same logical properties-cannot be distin-
guished semantically and can only be differentiated pragmatically. On
the other hand one might argue that they are different semantically but
t h a t both carry ambiguities which can only be captured by pragmatics.
Exposed to this dilemma it seems slightly more sensible to hold that
the “sense” of these prepositions is constituted by their logical proper-
ties plus location which in the case of vor can be specified as an area
adjacent to the “face” of whatever is the value of y or x. The “sense”
of “face”, or rather the opposition between front and back can then be
defined paradigmatically within the lexical field which also comprises
neben or uberlunter, i.e. an orientated three-dimensional space. What we
consider as this “face”, whether it is intrinsic or a quasi-deictic one,
namely understood as the suface most visible to the speaker, or defined
by an intrinsic orientation of the y- or x-argument becomes then a
matter of pragmatics, i.e. the basic “sense” of vorlhinter is thus defined
in terms of “confrontation” which is independent of the manner in
which frontness or backness are assigned to objects in any particular
way, this being a task of pragmatics. With this approach we can continue
to maintain that vorlhinter are non-synonymous, i.e. that vor gives a
connection seen as relative to the “face” of a complement, no matter
whether understanding (a), (b))or (c) applies, and that hinter is a con-
nection seen as relative to the “anti-face” or back of the complement.
If the “sense” of these two adverbials is understood in the above
described way one is still left with the question about their “reference”.
If it is taken as the truth-value of the proposition and we leave out the
truth-values attributable to the other parts of the statement, in

(18) Maria steht vor dem Auto,

vor dem Auto again can only be verified or falsified by pragmatic know-
ledge, as to whether reading (a), (b), or (c) applies. Out of this it follows

sn
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

that “reference” here too is dependent on how to interpret the “face”

of the complement and that entails that it depends on pragmatics.
Now consider the consequences of this:
If the three readings of vor dem Auto are purely pragmatically
determined they ought not to figure in the formulation of semantic
relations. Let us further look a t statement

(19) Maria steht vor dem Auto und das Auto steht vor Fred.
Taking into consideration the different understandings of vor, one can
conclude that Maria is in front of Fred only on the one reading where
transitivity is ensured. Transitivity is ensured if on any one under-
standing the car is in front of Fred and in back of Maria, i.e. we can
conclude
(20) Maria steht vor Fred.
This however is not necessarily the case otherwise, as we know from
the different readings of vor. This shows that the kind of interpretation
we choose is purely dependent on our pragmatic knowledge of the
situation and the kind of interpretation is crucial to the determination
of the semantic relations holding between e.g. (19) and (20). From this
it seems to follow that there is not sufficient ground for maintaining the
distinction between “sense” and “reference” or “meaning” and “sense”
in Dahl’s terminology-at least as far as prepositional phrases are
concerned-as both appear to be entirely pragmatically determined.

4.0. Unlike prep.phrases containing vorlhinter in which the point of

reference is mentioned specifically, the adverbials vornelhinten are
deictic or anaphoric in nature and the point of reference is not mentioned.
The notion of “deixis” has recently gained new interest and is being
much discussed today by many linguists. Especially Fillmore (1966,
1972), Lyons (1968,’1973 forthc.), Heger (1963, 1965), and Wunderlich
(1968, 1970) have dealt with this particular feature of languages at
greater length. Without going into detail here, one can define “deixis”
roughly as a term referring to any action of pointing as it occurs within
human speech-events with the purpose of giving orientation to a hearer
as to time or place talked about. Such pointing can be done by different
means: it can be done by gestures only-in which case it does not be-
come susceptible for linguistic description-or i t can be done through
certain devices of language and can then in addition be accompanied or
not by gestures. As main deictic categories we can consider temporal/

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spatial adverbials, pronouns, tense. In this paper however only spatial

adverbs will be treated, the other devices cannot be dealt with here.
Typical temporal deictic adverbs are today, now, yesterday, tomorrow,
locative ones here and there. These however do not stand on their own
but interact with other deictic devices so that in a sentence like
(21) I am here,
we find three deictic expressions: 1. I, whose referent can only be
identified if the hearer knows who utters the sentence, 2 . am, which
relates the time being referred to to the time of utterance, 3. here,
which again can only be interpreted if the addressee knows the place
of the utterance. The references of all three of these expressions can
only be established deictically.
Since egocentricity has often been considered a heuristic device by
means of which we recognize and see the outside world using ourselves
as the basic point of reference (cf. Leibniz, GP, 111, 247, V, 96, VI, 493)
and since this carries implications for our language (cf. Prior 1968 a.,
b.), I becomes linked up via the speech-act itself with here and now,
or with there and then, you with there, so that all deictic reference be-
comes closely related with the dichotomy ego-including vicinity vs.
non-ego-including vicinity. Here then is definable as the place of the
speaker a t the moment of utterance so that a sentence like
(22) I am there
is contradictory under the standard interpretation where there is where
I am not. However in case there is used to refer to a place named be-
fore it is non-contradictory but “anaphoric” (see further below).
(23) I will be/was there
on the other hand is grammatical in all readings as the different deictic
features do not exclude each other as they do in (22). This kind of deixis
which is situation-bound and pragmatic will be referred to from now on
simply as deixis.
Apart from this prototype of a deictic sentence, as shown in (21) and
(23), which can only be interpreted with help of extratextual knowledge,
the pointing can be made within language, which is the case if an ex-
pression refers back to an utterance mentioned in the previous speech-
event, such as in
(24) We drove from Gairloch to Ullapool. There we finally found a
hotel where we could stay for the night.

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 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

I n this sentence there clearly refers to some place which is other than
where the speaker is a t the time of utterance, namely to the place men-
tioned as a town we reached on our journey. So there points to Ullapool.
to a place which has been previously mentioned in the text. This usage
of contextual deixis is usually called anaphora as it refers to some lin-
guistic unit talked about already.
As becomes apparent through (24) the notions of deixis and anaphora
are not mutually exclusive. As the speaker is not in Ullapool a t the
time of the speech-event-otherwise he would refer to Ullapool as herc
-the sentence is thus deictic as well.
Just as the hearer must have pragmatic knowledge in order to under-
stand a deictic sentence, he must remember the proposition made in the
previous speech-event, including the temporal structure of the order oi
discourse, if he wants to understand an anaphoric sentence. I n a con-
versation both speaker and hearer must be able to refer to previously
mentioned units.
As has become obvious through these examples one and the same
adverb can be used either deictically or anaphorically; this applies t o
vornelhinten too.
I n Reichenbach’s terminology deictic expressions are “token-reflexi-
ve words” (284), “which refer to the corresponding token used in a n
individual act of speech” (284). It seems more accurate however to say
that they refer not to the token itself but to the referent of the corre-
sponding token. Any deictic adverb which expresses a spatial location
could thus be defined as one giving “the location pointed to by a
.
gesture accompanying this token . .” (336). According to this definition
vorne refers to the location in front of the speaker’s face, hinten to the
place a t the back of the speaker. It is evident that in this interpretation
only deixis proper is subsumed and anaphora excluded. Alternative
terms used for this kind of deictic adverb in linguistics are adverbs
“relativ zum Sprecherstandpunkt” (Steinitz, 157) or “Zeigworter”
(Buhler, 107 ff.), which have in common the property of being correctly
applicable with respect to one single point of reference only. As has
been pointed out by Reichenbach these so-called deictic adverbs of
time and place are-as far as their function within a sentence is con-
cerned-not adverbs in the strict sense of modifiers of the verb. Place
adverbs like vornelhinten are-according to him-supposed to specify
the place argument to which the sentence as a whole refers (308). I n the
statement
(25) John steht vorne,
7--Stdin T.innuiatirn X X T X . 1975 93
 BEATE DREIKE

when answering the question: Where is John standing?, vorne does not
specify John’s “action”, i.e. his standing, but the argument John as
well. However if (25) is intended as an answer to a question like: Who
is standing in front?, i.e. if John constitutes a comment, then John is
excluded from being modified by vorne. This conception of deictic
locative adverbs as modifying not the verb but the arguments as well
may justify their treatment as predicates which carry two arguments
in a way similar to that in which we treated the prepositions above.

4.1. Vornelhinten are expressions relating some entity to a given place

by pointing at it deictically or anaphorically. Since any pointing-
whether it is gestural or linguistic-establishes a dyadic relation, two
components are necessary: the speech-event or the pointing-event and
the event/object which becomes subject to the pointing. Usually this
dichotomy of two correlata holds, though it has to be mentioned that
there are rare cases such as in a statement like

(21) I am here

which is a tautology except when used to attract attention, where the

two correlata coincide in so far as the location pointed to is identical
with the one from which the action of pointing arises. This is of course
not true if (21) occurs in a situation where e.g. two people are discussing
points on a map and in this context (21) is uttered as an accompani-
ment to a pointing gesture.
One can account for this dichotomy of two correlata by postulating
that there are two arguments going with the predicate: one of which is
the point of reference or location of the speaker and one of which a
predication is made in the statement. When thus treating vornelhinten
as predicates joined with two arguments it is immediately apparent
that in surface structure only one argument is given linguistically. The
preposition vor could be represented as R(x, y)-so can the adverb
vorne if one considers that the y-argument here is not named but given
deictically, i.e. as a point of reference. It can therefore be maintained
that the adverb vorne is a reduced prepositional form of vor y, hinten
a reduced form of hinter y, where the y-argument, i.e. vor mir (in front
of me, where I = speaker) is a pronominalized object and can then be
deleted since the point of orientation is understood as the speaker’s
location or some anaphoric reference. Thus in a sentence like (25) John
steht vorne, or R(x), we get the value for the missing y-argument from

94
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

our pragmatic or contextual knowledge. Consequently the relationship

between vor and vorne, hinter and hinten can be seen as
vor NP : vorne :: NP : Pronoun
hinter NP : hinten :: NP : Pronoun,
where wornelhinten as well as the pronoun have to be understood
deictically, and the anaphora is an NP in each case. The three possible
interpretations for
(26) John ist vorne
can be described in the following way:
(d)If John is said to be vorne this can be read as John being in front of
the speaker, i.e. being in a place which is adjacent to the face of the
speaker uttering this sentence. I n the form of a prep.phrase containing
vor (26) can be paraphrased as:

(27) John ist vor mir (= dem Sprecher),

which we have interpreted as a quasi-deictic sentence in section 2.2.
This reading is relative to the situation it occurs in and it is only
understandable if speaker and hearer have the same visual field. In
this understanding vorne is a deictic locative which gives the informa-
tion through the situation it is uttered in. It can be accompanied by a
demonstrative gesture but does not need to be if the hearer is already
informed about the location in front of the speaker. From this it follows
that the quasi-deictic interpretation becomes a deictic one when the
prep.phrase becomes adverbialized.
(e) Unlike the English i n front the frontness of vorne can be one exterior
or interior to an object. As we have already seen frontness can be seen
in terms of confrontation or of locomotion, and in both cases it is
possible that an entity is at the interior or exterior of another object or
entity. If e.g. John is sitting next to me in a car on one of the two front
seats I can say that he is vorne as opposed to hinten which would mean
that he is on one of the back seats. This is an interior y-intrinsic inter-
pretation, similar to the one we have described in 2.2., since it is the
orientation intrinsic to the car which makes me say that he is either
vorne or hinten. The same would be the case if e.g. a garden party takes
place and people are standing in front as well as a t the back of the
house. Then too John can be referred to as standing wornelhinten in
relation to the intrinsic front/back of the house no matter where the
speaker is himself. This would be an exterior y-intrinsic orientation.

9.5
 BEATE DREIKE

(f) Finally vornelhinten can occur as properly referring back anaphoric-

ally to some entity mentioned in the speech before. If e.g. I am saying
that the members of a conference were all walking across George Square
divided up in small groups and I then say that John was vorne, this
adverb does not refer to me (who reports the event) but it is relative to
the movement of the groups about whom I have spoken before.
The logical representation of all these three readings (d), (e), (f)
would be for ( 2 5 ) John steht vornelhinten:
V(J) & St(J)
H(J) & St(J)
and for a sentence such as (28) John lauft vorne/hinten:
V(J) L(J)
WJ) 8L L(J)
I n comparison with the representation of sentences (15) and (17) we
lack here the y-argument, as it is given deictically. The instrumental
interpretation of (1 6) cannot occur with vornelhinten as they are adverbs
denoting location and are marked [-direction]. Only if I ask where John
is standing or walking do I get the answer vornelhinten. I n case I ask
where he is going to I would be told
(29) John geht nach vorne,
where the preposition nach carries the directional element and vorne
again would be denoting a mere location.
Within this context one brief mention should be made of the proad-
verbials davorldahinter. Owing to the fact that in German the preposi-
tions denoting time are vorlnach, those denoting spatiality vorlhinter,
davor like vor can be used to denote not only spatial but temporal rela-
tions as well-which however cannot be considered here. Both davorl
dahinter are made up by the basically non-deictic prepositions vorl
hinter plus the deictic adverb da. Nevertheless their usage is never a
purely deictic one but always anaphoric, such as in
(30) A: Sag John, dass er sich unbedingt noch das Bild von Dali
ansehen soll. B: Er steht gerade davor.
Davor here refers to Bild of Dali, it is independent of the speaker’s
point of orientation and is thus proper anaphora.

5 . Taking up the previous discussion about dissociating “sense’) from

“reference”, one can once again raise the question as to what is the
 WHAT IS THE “SENSE” OF PREPOSITIONS

“sense” of vornelhinten and what is their “reference”. Basically the

problem is the same as outlined in section 3, yet i t is still more com-
plicated because of the absence of lexical items as a value for the y-
variable. As there is no specific value which can be attributed to these
deictic adverbs one can argue that their “sense”-as the “sense” of an
other lexical item-is partially determined paradigmatically, which
means by the property which is given them through their position
within a lexical field together with other adverbials which specify locn-
tion relative to some aspect or dimension of objects within a given
language, i.e. that vornelhinten are determined by other lexical items,
such as rechtsllinks, obenlunten, innenlaussen. This kind of “sense”
however is-as has been shown above-not fully specific with respect
to the different ways in which the adverbs can be understood, and to
reason that there are three different “senses” to vornelhinten, namely
one y-intrinsic, one deictic and one anaphoric one is unsatisfactory. If
on the other hand one defines them on the “sense”-level in terms of
frontness vs. backness one still has to account for a three-way am-
biguity involving both “semantic” and “pragmatic” considerations.
Here again it seems arbitrary to draw a distinction between semantic
and pragmatic factors which would justify the “sense”- vs. “reference”-
dichotomy. Consequently one might argue that the distinction be-
tween the “sense” and “reference” of such deictic adverbials as vornel
hinten-and surely many others of this type-collapses and how they
are understood can only be captured pragmatically, namely in terms
of “reference”, which has to be given anaphorically or deictically.

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Department of Linguistics
University of Edinburgh