The Temporal Meaning of the English Preposition By

Abstract

This article provides a semantic description of the English prepositional phrase ‘by [TIME]’ as in He’ll be back here by five and He was dead by then.

  I argue that the speaker uses ‘by [TIME]’ when he or she (a) conceptualizes [TIME] as the end point of mental scanning along the timeline and (b) asserts that that state obtains at [TIME] which is described by the VP—or, more precisely, which is either designated by the stative VP (e.g. be back, was running, have finished a paper) or implied by the non-stative VP (e.g. come back, got hungry, finish a paper)—that ‘by [TIME]’ modifies. The prototypical context in which ‘by [TIME]’ occurs is one in which (a) the speaker mentally scans the timeline elsewhere in the sentence or discourse (i.e. outside the by-phrase) as well, and (b) the VP that ‘by [TIME]’ modifies is a stative VP that is compatible with the interpretation that the designated state is a result of some change.

  I believe that the only way to reveal the exact nature of a lexical item is to adopt a two-sided approach like the one presented here for the temporal use of by: investigate meaning with reference to linguistic context and linguistic context with reference to meaning. This case study, I hope, will open up an avenue for the semantic investigation of English prepositions that does not disregard the linguistic contexts surrounding them.