The Meanings of the Preposition “ BY ” in the IX-XIX Centuries with Their Azerbaijani Equivalents

The article deals with the meanings of the English preposition “by” in the IX-XIX centuries and their Azerbaijani equivalents. During that period the preposition “by” had more than 10 variants of writing. From the IX to the XIX centuries the preposition “by” was used in 6 main meanings: the meanings were connected with position, motion (or action), time, mental proximity, circumstances (condition, manner), medium (or means ). Each of these meanings of the preposition “by” included a lot of small meanings or sub-meanings.


Introduction
The article is devoted to the preposition "by" which is considered to be one of the main prepositions of the English Language. The theme of prepositions is very debatable in linguistics. As Azerbaijan was one of the former 15 Soviet Union republics, the viewpoints of Soviet scholars or linguists differed from those of the scholars and linguists of western countries. So, in the article one can see different viewpoints of Azerbaijani, Russian linguists or grammarians as well as western ones.
According to prof. Oruj Musayev, the great Azerbaijan scholar, in Modern English the parts of speech are divided into 3 groups. They are: notional parts of speech, structural parts of speech and independent parts of speech. The Russian scholars have approximately the same division, only with slight differences. The preposition is considered to be one of the structural parts of speech. It is a word relating to a group of words. Not having its lexical meaning and syntactical function in a sentence, the preposition is considered a structural part of speech.
In Modern English, from the morphological point of view, the category of case of the noun is weak and the preposition is used to express the grammatical relations which exist between nouns and other parts of speech.
The preposition is a structural part of speech and shows the relationship between two notions, not depending on that whether they are things, ideas or actions.
It is necessary to mention that in the Azerbaijan language there doesn't exist a part of speech called "preposition" and in the Azerbaijan language the relation between the nouns and other parts of speech are expressed by case suffixes and some other suffixes. These relations can also be expressed by some lexical means of expression.
2. Prepositions can be used with all forms (types) of nouns (e.g. with collective nouns, with material nouns, with abstract nouns, etc.).
3. Prepositions are not joined with verbs, but they can be used before gerunds or verbs in the form of noun.
Besides nouns, objects can be expressed by: 1. Pronouns.
Prepositions are often joined with verbs, forming phrasal or composite verbs and such kind of prepositions are defined as postpositions.
Prepositions may consist of one word or a prepositional phrase, which functions as a whole unit. A preposition is always followed by a noun, which is the "object" of the preposition. Prepositions and their objects make prepositional phrases, which have the function of adverbial (adjective or adverb).

Types of prepositions according to the meaning
As it has already been mentioned, in English there exist more than 150 prepositions. According to the viewpoints of Russian and Azerbaijani grammarians the prepositions, according to their meaning, are divided into the prepositions of: 1. place. This type includes in, on, at, under, near, behind, by, etc. Most of the prepositions of place also express time when standing before the words denoting time: at, by, in, on, etc. But the viewpoints of foreign scholars are quite different. They think that there exists another classification of prepositions. They find more than 30 types of prepositions, which include the prepositions of movement, means, comparison, cause, connection, measure and manner, standard, exception and addition, negative condition, reaction, concession, support and opposition, accompaniment, stimulus, source, origin, etc.
One of the main problems concerning the preposition in English is that some prepositions can express several different meanings. It would be useless to try to classify all the prepositions, since they differ very much in their meanings.
The biggest group of the prepositions includes the prepositions of place and time.
The following prepositions are considered the most widely-used prepositions in English: at, about, after, behind, by, between, in, into, of, off, on, out, to, towards, up, upon, with, within, etc.
But prepositions often become the cause of many problems, as only prepositions, in comparison with other parts of speech, can substitute one another in most cases, not taking into consideration the shade of meaning.
The most effective method of learning or mastering prepositions is learning the prepositions and remembering phrasal verbs through practice and memorizing. It is especially useful for bilingual students, for whom the use of prepositions seems to be one of the hardest parts of the English language.

Means of expression of the English Preposition "BY"
One of the most widely-known prepositions of Modern English is the preposition "by". Before speaking about the origin of the preposition "by" and its meanings in the Azerbaijan language, we should speak about some peculiarities of the Azerbaijan and English languages.
As is well known, the English language belongs to analytical languages group, but the Azerbaijan language does to synthetical languages group. Accordingly, different notions in the English language are mainly expressed by different words, but in the Azerbaijan language they are expressed mainly by synthetical elements, e.g. by means of affixes.
According to the above mentioned views, the means of expression of the preposition "by" in Azerbaijan are divided into the followings: 1. Synthetical means, e.g. suffixes.
2. Analytical means, e.g. different words or parts of speech.
So, investigating the origin of the English prepositions, one can see that they coincide (or they are very alike) with the prepositions belonging to other languages. It is natural, as they may have been borrowed from other languages (OR maybe they had one and the same origin).

The Meanings of "BY" in the IX-XIX Centuries with their Azerbaijani Equivalents
It must be noted that approximately all prepositions possess more than one meaning. "By" is one of such prepositions. According to its meanings the preposition "by" is connected with 6 main notions or (leading) meanings.
6. with "circumstances, condition, manner, cause, reason" (Chiefly developments or weakenings of earlier senses) (in general, stressed and weak (unstressed) forms of the previous meanings.

Tyll she be stronge to goo by her-self.
Till she is strong enough to go by herself.

That came vs by and very near, Ascendynge vp into her hyghe sete.
That came us by and very near, ascending up into her high seat.

An angill come & hem forbad To wend by hym [Herod] eny way.
An angel came and forbade him to go by him anyway.

3.
There is nother castel nor towne by xx myles nyghe aboute it.
There is neither castel, nor town by xx miles near about it.

1.
He ded shuld be, And ly in erthe by dayes thre.
He should be dead, and have lied on earth by three days (= for three days).

He bryngiþ in newe [servants] þat done werse bi litil tym.
He brought in the new servant who has done worse by little time.

Heold Crist hiss fasste … Bi daʒhes & bi nahhtess.
Crist held fast to the son (= young man, warrior) by days and by nights.

1.
No such Merchand … should put any Herring to Sale by Barrel, Demy-Barrel, or Firkin.
2. By means of their Brokers they buy by the great, and sell them againe by the piece.
By means of their Brokers they buy great portions and sell them again by pieces.

By him and by this woman heere, what know you?
What do you know in connexion with him and in connexion with this woman here?

He hathe us up lyfft By the means of hys sonne callyd Emanuell.
He had us guided by means of his son (called) Emanuell.

Summary and Concluding Remarks
As a conclusion, we must note that each of the meanings of the preposition "by" had several means of expression during the IX-XIX centuries. These means included other simple prepositions which were closer to the preposition "by" in meaning, some phrasal prepositions and some expressions. While looking through the meanings of the preposition "by" in Modern English, we can come across with such a fact that the preposition "by" still retains most of its old meanings.
When speaking about the expressions with "by", it should also be mentioned that approximately all of them are still in use in Modern English, but some of them had only slight changes, such as by cas, by one's self, etc.
When speaking about the Azerbaijani equivalents of the preposition "by", we should note that they consist of analytical and synthetical ones. So, one fact is evident that in the Azerbaijan language analytical equivalents form a greater layer than synthetical ones. Azerbaijani equivalents are expressed by case suffixes, notional (mainly adverbs) and secondary (helping) parts of speech, especially goshma which doesn't exist in other languages, including English.