Surrounding

A Figure surrounds a Ground. The Ground location is presented as more likely to be a known location than the location of the Figure. Some lexical units entail more-or-less complete surrounding in two or three dimensions (e.g. surround.v), while others entail surrounding on only two sides (e.g. astride.prep, straddle.v). Like other locative relations, the Figure may be any of a movable entity, an immovable entity, or an event. The hand around the sword-hilt was no less impressive than the sword . The drug war straddles the border of the US and Mexico . This frame resembles the Adorning frame, in that both involve a Figure "covering" some Ground, but the Surrounding frame differs in that the Profiled_region is not coextensive with the Ground, as it is in the Adorning frame, and, in fact, unusually for a locative relation, the Ground entity is normally smaller than the Figure. For this reason, the verbs of this frame are often used in the passive (restoring the normal relationship of stative subjects to oblique elements). In addition to several lexical units of this frame originating as metaphorical extentions of much more specific posture descriptions (straddle.v, astride.prep), this frame is itself used in a productive metaphor, involving abstract entities metaphorically "impinging" on other entities (in terms of derivative similarity, control, etc.), as in the following: that led to Dolce and Gabbana to base their autumn/winter D and G collection around her style in 2008 But he discovered that the literary world was a battlefield— mined with hatred, rimmed with snipers. Countless legends sprung up around the knight. Common abstract entities that serve as Figure include emotions ('the hopelessness surrounding them'), as well as theories, arguments, and collective philosophies ('Ageism surrounds us, but passes largely unnoticed'). This metaphor arises from the normal invited implicature of this frame that the Figure may physically impinge on the Ground, either protecting it, or limiting its motion, or even supporting it.