Linguists, psychologists and philosophers have long observed the importance of space and spatial experience for both language and thought. In this book, we examine the nature of human spatio-physical experience and how human conceptualization of spatial relations is reflected in the English language. In particular, we are interested in how spatial concepts are systematically extended to provide a wide array of non-spatial meanings. We do so through a study of English spatial particles, an important subset of which are prepositions.

The central notion we explore is that of a spatial scene, a conceptualized relation grounded in spatial interaction and experience, involving entities that are related in a particular spatio-configurational way. For instance, in a spatial scene described by: The cup is on the table, the cup is in contact with the upper side of the table. A distinct spatio-configuration is described by the following: The coffee is in the cup. This scene involves the coffee being located inside (as opposed to outside) the cup. However, spatial scenes do not involve only spatio-physical relations or configurations. It turns out that particular spatial relations have non-trivial consequences that are meaningful to humans. The spatial scene involving on also involves a support function between the table and the cup: unless enough of the cup's base is situated on the table, the cup will fall and smash on the floor.