the semantic network of the preposition “ba” in persian: a congnitive study

the semantic network of the preposition 'ba' in persian: a cognitive study as one of the widely used prepositions in persian, 'ba' (i.e. with) may also function as an adjective particle or affix. this paper studies various meanings of preposition 'ba' within a cognitive lexical semantics framework. it aims to show that the various meanings of this preposition do not emerge randomly. drawing the image schemas of the prototypical meaning of this preposition and also proposing a semantic network for it are two other objectives of this study. the results show that the preposition 'ba' has a systematic semantic network in which various distinct meanings can be classified into three meaning clusters. these meaning clusters include, matching, opposing, and situational clusters, which are scattered around the prototypical meaning of vicinity and accompaniment within a radial structure.