The speech went on (and on) as Kerry dozed off (*and off) A conceptual grammar approach to on and off

This chapter provides an encapsulated segment of a larger, on-going study centering on a complex set of prepositions and their corresponding phrasal verb particles and adverbs viewed from the methodological and analytic perspective of Conceptual Grammar. Conceptual Grammar is an approach to the analysis and teaching of grammar that combines three paradigms: corpus, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics to reveal systematically patterned grammatical meanings. The visual conceptual system is intended to dually represent various gradations of spatial/temporal/metaphorical/abstract meanings in graphic terms, using simple shapes as a mnemonic to aid in the apprehension of conceptual meaning. The system is intended to be generalizable across all uses and meanings of the target lexemes and thus to facilitate productivity of use, serving as a new type of “grammatical rule”.