Frame Report

The Figure is perceived as located relative to a certain Ground location in a certain direction specified by the particular LU. The Figure can be an entity or an event.

The cat|Fig is above the mat.

The Ground serves as a basis for describing the location of the Figure.

The cat is above the mat|Grnd.

The period of time during which the locative relation between Figure and Ground obtains.

He was north of the park on Friday|tim.

An indication of how accessible the Figure is to some participant in the speech context (either the speaker or the addressee, or some other highly salient viewpoint in a narrative). This FE normally describes availability for manipulation and use, but may simply describe how easily seen or difficult to see the Figure is. There is a closed class of items that can fill this slot, including only 'just' and 'right' indicating ease of access, and 'way' and 'all the way' indicating distance and difficulty of access.

Oh yeah , the gas station is right west of here .

An indication of how the locative phrase relates to the grounding of the speech situation, either locating it near (here) or far (there, yonder), or specifically separated from the speech context by distance or a barrier (over). Fillers of this FE are restricted to this closed class of items.

It was lying there below the lightpole.

This FE identifies the Direction from a reference location (generally, the deictic center) of a path to the Figure. This FE is filled by one of a closed class of adverbs: up, down, out (meaning 'beyond the boundary around the viewpoint'), off (meaning 'disconnect between landmark and figure'), back (meaning 'along a line from front to back of landmark, and relatively inaccessible'), and, more rarely, away, along, and dialectally, back down (meaning 'down and behind').

The cat was hiding way out|Dir north of the house.

An indication of how closely the position of Figure matches the prototype expected from the image schema associated with the target. This FE is normally filled by closed-class, dedicated adverbs like right, straight, directly, and due (and some combinations of these), but also occurs with rarer items like 'smack dab'.

I run in Ketchum, due east of the highschool .

This FE identifies the Distance between the Figure and the Ground. This FE requires an image schema with a vector that extends from the Ground, or a subpart of the Ground, in some direction, and the Distance is measured along this vector from the Ground to the profiled region. Go 30 feet to the left of the pool. Note that a number of frequent adverbial targets identify the Ground, with the location of an implicit viewer, so Distance is effectively measured from the viewpoint location in these cases. We were already nearly 1000 meters ahead.

A description of how the access path to the Ground interacts with time. This FE is filled only by the closed class of adverbials back.adv (which indicates that the position was occupied by the Figure before) and on.adv (which indicates a continued path). While this FE in its most basic use refers to cases of actual motion, it can be used with descriptions of static position, in which case it either refers to fictive, imagined motion, or it backgrounds motion entirely (as in the example below).

They finally moved back east.