Lexical meaning: The prepositions en and dans in French

A lexical (semantic) analysis of en & dans which attempts to show that certain oppositions in the French lexicon are structured in the same way grammatical oppositions are structured, & are thus highly systematic, is provided. Fundamental to the analysis is the idea that language is a system of signs where the signs are in a network of paradigmatic relations & the network itself is set up by semantic distinctive features. The invariant meaning of prepositions is characterized in terms of semantic features with a marked (+X)/unmarked (0X) opposition. The analysis is begun with a discussion of the preposition's semantic nature as a part of speech; & in particular, the fact that built into the preposition are an object & a modified (something else in the utterance about which the preposition & its object give ancillary information), & the fact that the preposition sets up a relationship between these 2. The preposition is, as a part of speech, deictic, in the sense that it necessarily assumes the presence of other elements in the linguistic context of which it is a part. A lexical analysis of the 2 prepositions en & dans is given. With a large number of examples culled from literary sources, dictionaries, native speakers, etc., it is shown that en is marked for "dimensionality" in the sense that dimensions (or outlines or confines) are essential to the object/modified relationship set up by the preposition. There are 2 major contextual variants of dimensionality in en: that in which the modified is contained in the dimensions set up by the object (e.g., un homme en prison); & that in which the modified & the object together make the dimensions (sucre en poudre). Dans, on the other hand, is marked not only by dimensionality but also by deictic decalage: there is a specification, a separation of a particular set of objects or a particular object from the general set given by the lexical meaning of the object itself. Thus, e.g., en prison refers to prison in a general & vague manner, while dans la prison assumes a particular, a specific prison. En deux heures means "in two hours, in a two-hour time period" while dans deux heures means "in two hours, two hours from now" (i.e., only that 2-hour time period which starts at the moment when the words are uttered). Various other minimal pairs are discussed. It is concluded that there is a marked/unmarked relation between dans & en, with dans being marked & en being unmarked. Furthermore, it is postulated that the 2 fe