Transformations on image schemas and cross-linguistic polysemy

(13) a. Er fiel und stand sofort wieder auf.
He fell and stood immediately up again.
b. Stell es wieder an seinen Platz!
Put it back on its place!
I will come back to this particular development in connection with the next set
of words, namely form equivalents of Mod. Eng. again.
Besides the with-set there were also other Germanic words expressing face-toface-orientation,
e.g. OSw. i gen, OE ongean (ongegn), which have the same
etymological origin, and belong to what I refer to as the again-set. Broadly
speaking, both words show the same development, from OSw., OE ‘against’ to
Mod. Sw., Mod. Eng. ‘again’. Below we will take a closer look at the polysemy
of OSw. i gen (see also Ekberg 2002).
The central meaning of i gen during the Old Swedish period was ‘toward’,
‘against’ (14a). In adverbial use i gen developed two meaning variants that at
first glance seem to be unrelated both to the central meaning and to each other,
namely ‘closed’ and ‘back’; cf. the Swedish examples in (14b,c).
(14) a. Konungin gik honum siälfuer ij geen
king-the walked him himself toward
The king himself walked toward him
b. Dörren slog igen.
door-the hit IGEN
The door closed (with a bang).
c. Besvären kom igen efter en vecka.
pains-the came back after a week
With the schema in Fig. 2 in mind it is, however, not surprising that a meaning
of ‘closure’ may develop (14b). A mental and physical movement face-to-face
cannot go on forever since the path at some point is blocked by the other entity.
The meaning ‘closed’ arises when the two entities meeting one another close
each other’s path, cf. Fig. 6 below.
Fig. 6. The meaning ‘closed’.
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