The Conceptualization of the Comitative Preposition maʿa ‘with’ in Jordanian Arabic from a Cognitive Semantics Perspective

The present study investigates the semantics of the comitative preposition maʿa ‘with’ in Jordanian Arabic (JA). It aims to examine how the preposition has the potentiality to denote a primary comitative sense in addition to other secondary comitative ones as a means of coding particular semantic thematic roles of the accompanee and the companion with reference to the main verb. Adopting a Cognitive Semantics approach, the study strives to pinpoint the polysemous nature of the preposition from a holistic constructional perspective. The researcher applies a qualitative research method for the analysis of the data taken from spoken JA. Forty examples were collected and categorized based on Arab linguists’ categorization of comitative constructions. The study limits itself to analyzing how the conception of linguistic expressions and the world around us leads to the multifunctional nature of the comitative relator maʿa. It is found that maʿa is semantically used as a preposition to encode a (non) physical comitative relation between its two arguments. The results show that such a relation, in some secondary comitative constructions, does not necessitate that the two arguments share the same activity, and unity of time is not emphasized. The findings emphasize that it is our cognition of the context that determines the degree of the principality of the two arguments. Arabic Non-native speakers are becoming more interested in learning its vernacular dialects; consequently, focusing on comitative constructions will help them speak more fluently and gain a deeper understanding of the society culture they live in.