A Corpus-based Analysis Of The Directional Verbs "Lai" And "Qu" In Relation To Cognition And Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Based on the LCMC Corpus, this paper surveys the uses of the 13 compound directional verbs in different circumstances and analyzes such uses from both semantic and syntactic perspectives. After that, the Image Schema Theory, Prominence Theory, Reference Point Theory and Metaphor Theory are employed to analyze the original and extensional meanings of these compound directional verbs. The analysis shows that the extensional meanings of the 13 compound directional verbs have a similar cognitive basis.That is their original meanings, namely the directional meanings, are a kind of image schema. Their extensional meanings are the result of the prominence of their Source, Target and Path. In this process of development, through conceptual metaphors, the spatial concepts have been mapped from space domain to time domain, status domain and psychology domain. By applying our findings to TCFL and then checking the teaching results with questionaires we find this teaching method practical and useful.