Frame Report

A Figure is located in contact with a Ground. With some words that evoke this frame, the Figure is also asserted to be fully or partially supported by the Ground (e.g. on), while in others a support relation is either denied (e.g. to, as in "she put her hand to the wall") or unspecified (e.g. against). In addition, some LUs assert a direction in which to find the Figure from the Ground (e.g. atop).

There was a tight-fitting lid on the bottle .
Against the back wall stood a young black man staring at his shoes .
Against the back wall three students were reading .
Clean if the jewelery is ever in contact with water or chlorine .

This frame participates in productive metaphor cases, like "shining a light on corruption", "Stalin's hand lay heavy on the presses", "it touched her heart" in each of which an abstract entity affects another entity as if they were in physical contact.


This frame is intended to cover the description of writing, images, or situations being depicted on a document, canvas, screen, or other flat surface, including metaphorical cases where there is no literal document, like "on record" or "pretty low on my list".
They were arguing on screen .
Watching chess is pretty low on my list .

The use of on.prep to describe use of a vehicle is not included in this frame even though it does involve contact and support. The sense distinction is proven by the omissability of the Ground only in the vehicle cases:
She is already on (the bus/the ship...) .
My paper is on *(the desk) .
This use is related to Ride_vehicle. A similar argument holds for uses of on.prep with a clothing Figure, which virtually always omits the Ground; see Wearing.


The use of on.prep and upon.prep for Topics is considered a non-productive metaphor (see Topic). No other target in the frame allows the use, nor is is correlated with other language of the source domain of contact (e.g. stand, sit, lie, put, rest).