functional effects, prepositional semantics, and metaphorical containment in brazilian portuguese: the case of em, dentro de, and fora de

I analyzed conventional metaphorical expressions in Brazilian Portuguese having lexicalized functional effects of spatial scenes as complements of the prepositions dentro de [inside], em [in, on, at], and fora de [out of]. The functional effects investigated were ‘protection’, ‘covering/hiding’, ‘control’, and ‘envelopment’, which constitute the family resemblance concept of Containment. I provided a cognitive account of these conventional expressions in terms of primary metaphors such as invisible is inside and
uncontrolled is outside, emerging through experiential correlation in primary scenes. I described twelve meanings based on the container image schema, four based on the verticality schema, and four based on the nonimagetic notion of ‘non-existence’. Contradicting my initial expectations, the corpus-based analysis revealed little overlapping between em and sob [under], and fora de and sem [without]. However, the study confirmed the asymmetry between the prepositions meaning ‘in’ and those meaning ‘out’.

Keywords: Metaphor. Experiential correlation. Containment functional relation. Prepositional meaning. Brazilian Portuguese.