Semantic, pragmatic, and discourse perspectives of preposition use

"This book is an in-depth study of three locative prepositions which are often interchangeable in Indonesian, namely, di, pada and dalamroughly corresponding to the English on, in, at. Discussing a range of quite subtle meanings and uses of these prepositions in different types of discourse (or genre), it provides a complete descriptive account of prepositional meanings that reflects more closely the range of actual uses by speakers in spoken and written discourses. It addresses important semantic and pragmatic issues including polysemy, sense distinction, conceptual and non-conceptual aspects of preposition use, borrowing and semantic change, context and inferences. The issue of preposition alternation, which has received little attention in previous studies, is discussed in terms of the interplay between overlaps in the semantic range and pragmatic as well as discourse-related factors." -- Back cover.