| Although particle is of small number in English language, it appears everywhere and people cannot avoid using them in communication. Preposition and adverb are generally named as particle, which is widely used in English Idioms. As a special kind of conventional language expression form derived from long social practices of the English speaking nations, English idioms play an important role in daily life. This study assumes that understanding the meanings of particles in English idioms is helpful to understand English idioms, and then it provides a more effective way to understand and learn English idioms."Up" is a typical example of particles and of high frequency. Thus, particle "up" chosen as its subject matter, this study is based on prototype theory, image schema theory and conceptual metaphor theory to analyze the spatial and metaphorical meanings of particle "up" in English idioms from cognitive perspective.Human’s bodily experience of the objective world is the most direct and easiest to understand. And this is usually formed as prototypical spatial relations, which may be represented by image schema. As a cognitive model proposed by Lakoff (1987), image schema includes part-whole, link, center-periphery, and source-path-goal. Langacker (1991) makes deeper studies on these spatial relations and presents that image schema is made up of Trajector (TR), Landmark (LM) and Path, the spatial relation is unsymmetrical between TR and LM. Human beings first experience the spatial objective world, and then come to recognize time and many other abstract things. In order to recognize other abstract domains, metaphor is applied.Basic meanings of particle "up" from A Dictionary of Usage and Discrimination of English Preposition and Adverbs in Common Use are analyzed with the help of image schema theory and are those of "rising","direction","ending", and are found that in all meanings, TR is rising with a beginning or an ending along a path; TR may touch or cover LM; the relationship between TR and LM may be static or dynamic. Based on this, then more than two hundred English idioms with particle "up" of nearly four hundred relevant senses are collected from four dictionaries. They are classified into five domains with total17senses of "up" after cognitive analyses, such as space domain: "direction, northward"; time domain:"up to time"; quantity domain:"increase in blood pressure, speed, volume, price, warmth and knowledge","gathering","being busy""damaging and destroying"; social status domain:"improvement in social status","flatter and support"; state domain:"improvement in emotion","be conscious","health improvement","appearing, creating and coming into existence","preparing and providing","dividing and separating","finishing and completion","emphasizing ’wholeness’and’completeness’","meeting a criterion or repairing". And this study discovers that the first one is kept as its original basic spatial meaning, while domains of time, quantity, social status and state are regarded as mapped from space domain, among which the state domain takes a relatively large proportion. The collected data reveal that particle "up" may be transformed to be used as a verb, a noun or an adjective with the meanings of "rising; better condition and state". Whether used as a particle or as its transformations, the meanings of "up" can be concretely represented by TR and LM as shown in its basic meanings. And some effects of the meanings of particle "up" on the meanings of English idioms are deduced on the basis of the above analyses to include increase tendency, improvement tendency, appearing tendency, finishing and completion tendency. This may help learn English idioms with particles and other idioms. |
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