Cognitive approach has recently offered great tools for the study of polysemy as a common property of linguistic expressions at all levels. This article utilizes the cognitive lexical semantics framework to study /bœr/ ‘on’, both as a preposition and a verb particle in the first two chapters of Gulestan, the inspiring book of S´adi, the greate Iranian poet. The findings show that the systematic polysemy of /bœr/ as a radial category, has roots in the change of image schema, foregrounding, and metaphorical extension. The study puts forward some aspects of the writer’s mastery in the unique use of language. It can also pave the way for diachronic studies of this category and its metaphoric extension in Persian.
