The Semantic Prosodies Of English Adverb Particles

An adverb particle is an adverb that can combine with a verb to form a phrasal verb. Phrasal verbs are pervasively used by English speakers. Mastering them has been a big challenge for foreign language learners because phrasal verbs are usually considered as arbitrary and unsystematic combinations.One interesting phenomenon is that an adverb particle is likely to have some verbs but not others as their collocates. Few studies have been conducted on this issue. Thus, the current study investigates the semantic prosodic features of the adverb particles in collocation with verbs.Firstly,10most frequently used adverb particles and50verb collocates with highest log-likelihood value for each of the adverb particles have been retrieved from BNCweb. Secondly, the verb collocates are classified into several semantic sets according to their core semantic meanings with the help of the word cluster function in WordNet, a software which can cluster words by their semantic features. Thirdly, based on the classifications, the author analyzes and summarizes the semantic prosody of each adverb particle.The results show that the most dominant semantic sets into which the verb collocates are divided are sets of motion and contact because all the adverb particles refer to the spatial position and the direction of the movement. However, different adverb particles are likely to associate with motion and contact verbs with different semantic features. Despite motion and contact, different adverb particles are prone to have other kinds of verb collocates from different semantic sets such as the stative, change, competition, perception, and possession classes. The differences in the distributions of semantic sets among different adverb particles may result from the distinct basic meanings of the adverb particles.The findings of the study shed light on English learning and creative use of new phrasal verbs. Firstly, the semantic prosodies of the adverb particles arise from the semantic generalizations of the verb collocates. Recognition of the verb patterns would facilitate the learning of adverb particles as well as phrasal verbs. Secondly, the semantic classifications of the verbs show the verbs’productivity in producing phrasal verbs and serve as a good indicator of the acceptability of novel phrasal verbs.