DIFFERENTIATION OF THE SPATIAL MEANINGS OF GERMAN PREPOSITIONS AUF AND AN BY THE EXAMPLE OF PHRASES WITH THE COMPONENT “BODY PART”

Abstract

The article reveals a problem of differentiation spatial meanings of the German prepositions auf and an. As part of the study, the etymology of these prepositions, their actual spatial meanings recorded in the dictionary, as well as the meanings obtained by analyzing the contexts of use of these prepositions in free and stable phrases with the component ‘body part’ as a relatum were analyzed and compared. The study is conducted on the material of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences DWDS corpus. In the structure of spatial meanings of both prepositions, components have been identified that make it possible to draw a clearer boundary between these prepositions. The obtained data will expand the existing knowledge about the polysemy of prepositions, help establish the relationship between the spatial meanings of these prepositions and their meanings in stable use with verbs (the so-called control verbs), adjectives and nouns, and can be used in the practice of teaching German as a foreign language in order to improve effectiveness of learning.