A Cognitive Semantic Study Of The English Verb Of Take

A phrasal verb is an idiomatic combination of verbs and adverbs,or verbs and prepositions(or verbs,adverbs and prepositions).These verbs are concise and frequently used in English,and thus they have become the research subjects of many scholars.However,there are few studies on the relationship between phrasal verbs and their components.In the traditional researches,most of the traditional researches are analyzed from the perspective of constructivism.Scholars are mainly concerned for the surface structure and the substructure of phrasal verbs.Before the 1980 s,verbs in phrasal verbs were the focus of research in this field,while particles were neglected.In addition,traditional researches mainly focus on these semantic analysis,they hold the idea that the meanings of phrasal verb are freely constructed which is the sum of the verb and particle that neglects human cognition ability.There are few studies on the generation mechanism and the essence of phrasal verbs.Then,there are a number of representative scholars in the cognitive research,such as Lindner,Morgan,Hampe and Gries.In our country,lots of studies mainly involve the following aspects:introducing the history of phrasal verbs,proposing some basic structures,phonetic or semantic features,or several teaching strategies.This thesis mainly studies the construction of English phrasal verbs from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Cognitive linguistics believes that the comprehension of various concepts is based on human's objective world.By analyzing the samples,the meaning always extends from the central meaning to the extensive meaning.The rationale mainly bases on the Prototype Theory and the Image Schema Theory.In this view,the thesis analyzes the blending process of phrasal verbs by applying the Conceptual Blending Theory and finds that the different meanings of phrasal verbs are closely related to each other.As a result,it forms a complex semantic network which regards the basic meaning of phrasal verbs as the centralmeaning.In the research process,the author of the thesis uses the verb take with multiple meanings as examples to analyze.First,the author collects the classic meanings of take and a large number of related examples from the BNC corpus and three authoritative dictionaries,and summarizes the six basic meanings.Then according to the frequency of occurrence from a high to low sequence,the author adopts take out,take off,take back as the examples for case study.Finally,the thesis analyzes the meanings of the three phrasal verbs with the Conceptual Blending Theory.In order to make the analysis results more scientific and authentic,the samples of chapter 4 is derived from The Economists from 2018 to 2019.The study finds that there is a close relationship between the multiple meanings of phrasal verbs,and the semantics of entity verb take is relatively static.The polysemy of phrasal verbs is mainly affected by the change of the particles which leads to the generation of the semantic network.This thesis analyzes the mechanism of formation and change of phrasal verbs in English from the cognitive perspective,which has the guiding significance in promoting the English learning and teaching.It mainly includes two aspects.One is to enhance the learners' conscious about the mechanism of the changes in English verbs and English phrases.With this newer consciousness,it can improve their learning efficiency.Second,according to the mechanism of the formation,teachers should formulate corresponding and effective teaching methods,such as introducing schema in teaching methods.When students learning the English phrasal verbs,they first grasp the centre meaning and then extended the extensive meaning according to the mechanism.In this way,students can master English phrasal verbs more efficiently and easily.