| English phrasal verbs are so flexible and ubiquitous that English native speakers use them a lot in all kinds of situations.The fact is that one single phrasal verb can be used to express far more than one meaning,the meanings of English phrasal verbs especially their polysemous feature have widely aroused lots of attention.In the past,people tended to believe that the meanings of phrasal verbs are arbitrary.With the development of cognitive linguistics,scholars in recent years trying to analyze the polysemy of phrasal verbs from the cognitive view.By applying diverse notions pointed out in cognitive linguistics into research,the meanings of the particles in phrasal verbs have been studied quite thoroughly.However,enormous studies only focus on the meanings of particles,as both the verbs and the particles together form complete phrasal verbs,comparatively seldom have the studies concentrate on both the meanings of these two elements in phrasal verbs to see how they interact and contribute to the various meanings of phrasal verbs.Nor do these studies choose the particle off to probe into as this particle is the less concentrated one compared with other particles such as up and out.Thus,this study plans to collect and collate the English phrasal verbs V+off structure from Corpus of Contemporary American English,and tries to systematically analyze the formation of the multiple meanings of phrasal verbs from a cognitive view.The research questions are:(1)What image schemas are involved in the formation of the meanings of particle off,the meanings of verbs,and the meanings of the combined phrasal verbs?(2)How do particles and verbs interact and contribute to the polysemy of phrasal verbs?Six phrasal verbs including get off,cut off,take off,go off,pay off and turn off are selected as the research objects because they are the top six most frequently used phrasal verbs with off,and they are polysemous in nature.Meanings of these six verbs and the particle off are analyzed first separately then integrally,the internal compositionality and the analyzability of the meanings of phrasal verbs are proved.Totally 600 examples containing the top 100 examples for each phrasal verb are chosen and carefully analyzed.Based on the online dictionary Etymology and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English,the study confirms the meanings including the prototypical meanings and the extended meanings of these six verbs and the particle off.The image schema,especially the spatial image schema which owns landmark,trajector,and the path as the key elements,and the conceptual metaphor and metonymy are employed as theoretical foundations of the study.The inner semantic networks,to put it more precisely,how the verbs and the particle off interact with each other to make up the full and various meanings of English phrasal verbs are elaborated in detail.As for the result of the study,the prototypical meaning of the particle off is“separation”,and the extended meanings include “stop”,“accomplishment”,and“reduction”.By combining the prototypical meaning and the extended meanings of the particle off with the prototypical meaning and the extended meanings of each verb,and by showing the relevant image schemas of each sense,the inner semantic networks of every meaning of the phrasal verbs are illustrated.People’s embodied cognition and interaction with the surroundings play an essential role in people’s understanding of the diverse meanings of these phrasal verbs.It is proved that the multiple meanings of English phrasal verbs can be analyzable and may even be predictable when giving the various meanings of verbs and particles.Hopefully,the study can facilitate English language learners with their understanding and the utilization of the English phrasal verbs to a great extent. |
PDF Full Text Request