The traditional “arbitrary view”thinks that there is no contact between the different senses of preposi-tions and those different meanings of prepositions is a distributed semantic item collection.In view of the prototype theory,this paper interprets in,the spatial preposition,from three aspects as the definition of its prototypical mean-ing,the formation of different meanings split or shifted from the prototype,and the relationship between different meanings.It concludes that senses of prepositions are not arbitrary but derived from the prototype meaning.There is a radiation distribution as the center of the prototype.Finally,it puts forward the idea to explain the non-spatial meaning of the preposition in.%传统的“任意观”认为，介词的不同义项之间毫无联系，介词的多个义项是一堆分散的语义项集合。通过对介词in的原型意义确定，到各义项的派生形成过程，再到各义项之间的关系的逐一解释，发现：介词in的多个义项是有联系的，其多个义项由原型意义派生形成，相互之间以原型意义为中心呈辐射分布。认知语言学原型理论分析介词多义现象更具理据性。
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