An Embodied Study In Motor Verbs By Chinese EFL Learners

Embodied Language Cognition Theory argues that human language understanding is rooted in our sensorimotor system,which focuses on the sensory movement of language and emphasizes the empirical role(Glenberg,1999;Barsalou et al,2003).Verb is the most closely related type in vocabulary comprehension,but there are few studies on English motor verb from an embodied point of view(Pulvermüller et al,2005).Therefore,this study designs two experiments to explore whether the dynamic differences of motor verbs have an effect on the understanding of English motor verbs by Chinese EFL learners from the perspective of embodied language cognition theory,and further demonstrates whether the dynamic differences of motor verbs will influence the syntactic processing of the sentences or not.Before the experiment,we proposed the standard of the dynamic division of the English motor verbs.Talmy(1987)considers that motion event including motion,path,graph,and ground.Wen Xu(2007)holds the view that the motion event not only contains the above four categories of semantic parameters,but also refers to the manner of movement.In many languages,there are different forms of expressions of motion events,such as speed,intensity,and so on.Manner is the second most feasible composition to be encoded into language in motion events.Based on these opinions,this study finds out more semantic terms by analyzing the semantic meaning of motor verbs on the basis of speed and intensity.After excluding some semantic items that are not related to our study and some that are just limited to a few motor verbs,11 semantic parameters are enumerated as the criterion of dynamics of motor verbs.They are speed,intensity,sustainability,subjectivity,directionality,emotional inclusion,body involving,length of movement,target,range of motion as well as manner of movement.Based on the above eleven parameters,and reference to the division of English motor verbs of Beth Levin's English Verb Classes and Alternations as well as the classification of Sidhu,D.M(2014),we finally select twenty-six English motor verbs and divide them into three categories according to their differences of dynamics.Verbs which contain eight or more parameters are regarded as strong-motion verbs,and verbs which contain three or less parameters are considered as weak-motion verbs,while the rest are seen as moderate-motion verbs.In the first experiment,we invite 31 postgraduates of English major as our subjects and take the E-prime psychological text software as experimental tool.Subjects are asked to judge whether the word that he is seeing is a motor verb or not.After the experiment,we adopt ANOVA analysis to analyze the data.The results show that the differences of dynamics of English motor verbs have an effect on the processing of English motor verbs.Such effect is positively correlated,that is,strong-motion verbs have higher degrees of activation to the brain.There are two reasons as follows: on the one hand,semantic richness will also act in the verb processing of L2 learners;On the other hand,the impact of embodied language cognition theory will appear in the processing of motor verbs of second language.In addition,based on the conclusions of the first experiment,we further demonstrate whether the differences of dynamics of English motor verbs have an influence on the syntactic processing of the sentences.Therefore,we design the second experiment and invite 20 postgraduates of English major as our subjects and take the E-prime psychological test software as experimental tool.The experiment is carried out in the form of choosing the word and filling into the blank.After the experiment is completed,we adopt T-test to analyze the data.The results show that: from the perspective of response time,the dynamic differences of English motor verbs will affect the syntactic processing of sentences.That the stronger the English motor verbs are,the faster the sentences processing will be.The main reason lies in the decisive effect of semantics on syntax and the restriction of context.This study examines the impact of dynamics on the processing of English motor verbs by Chinese EFL learners and it argues that in the teaching of English verbs,we should not only pay attention to teaching the knowledge of morphology and meaning,but also should encourage them to carry out more social practices in order to enhance the experience of vocabulary,which can help them to promote the establishment as well as the reinforcement of representation so as to improve the accuracy of using English motor verbs.