| Chinese Abstract | 第1-6页 |
| English Abstract | 第6-10页 |
| Chapter 1 Introduction | 第10-15页 |
| ·Spatial Primacy and Polysemy of Spatial Prepositions | 第10-12页 |
| ·Objective of This Thesis | 第12-13页 |
| ·Research Question | 第13页 |
| ·Organization of the Thesis | 第13-15页 |
| Chapter 2 Literature Review | 第15-28页 |
| ·Spatial Cognition | 第15-17页 |
| ·The Cognitive Perspective of Spatial Metaphor | 第17-20页 |
| ·Two Approaches to Preposition Cognition | 第20-23页 |
| ·Image Schema | 第20-21页 |
| ·Metaphor | 第21-23页 |
| ·Studies on Preposition Cognition: Historical Perspective | 第23-26页 |
| ·Summary | 第26-28页 |
| Chapter 3 Research Methodology | 第28-40页 |
| ·The Prepositions | 第28-35页 |
| ·The Classification of Preposition | 第28-29页 |
| ·The Prepositions Used | 第29页 |
| ·Spatial Concept of Prepositions IN, ON and OVER | 第29-35页 |
| ·The Corpus Used | 第35-36页 |
| ·Data Collection and Classification | 第36-40页 |
| ·Data Collection | 第36-37页 |
| ·Data Classification | 第37-40页 |
| Chapter 4 Results and Discussion | 第40-65页 |
| ·The General Picture of All Instances with IN, ON, OVER | 第40-42页 |
| ·The General Pictures of IN | 第42-43页 |
| ·The General Picture of ON | 第43-44页 |
| ·The General Picture of OVER | 第44-45页 |
| ·The General Comparison of Distributions of Metaphorical Extensions of IN, ON, OVER in Different Target Domains | 第45-48页 |
| ·The Six Target Domains of the Metaphorical Extensions | 第48-65页 |
| ·Situation as the Target Domain | 第48-54页 |
| ·Manner Domain | 第54-57页 |
| ·Target as the Target Domain | 第57-59页 |
| ·Time as the Target Domain | 第59-61页 |
| ·Logical Relation as the Target Domain | 第61-63页 |
| ·Social Relationship as the Target Domain | 第63-65页 |
| Chapter 5 Significance in Language Teaching and Lexicology | 第65-69页 |
| ·Significance in Language Teaching | 第65-68页 |
| ·Significance in Lexicology | 第68-69页 |
| Chapter 6 Conclusion | 第69-74页 |
| Major findings | 第69-71页 |
| Significance of the Present Study | 第71页 |
| Limitations of the Present Study and Suggestions for Further Research | 第71-74页 |
| References | 第74-82页 |
| Acknowledgements | 第82页 |
