A Cognitive Approach To Polysemy Of Particle Verbs

Polysemy of particle verbs often discourages students of English, for the multiple senses ofparticle verbs are difficult to memorize and grasp. Although there have been numerous studiesconducted on particle verbs and polysemy respectively, relatively rare studies focus on the polysemyof particle verbs. This paper aims at perceiving the different meanings of particle verbs with thecognitive approach. How the different senses of particle verbs are related and how we can accountfor the relatedness are the questions to be solved in this thesis. We try to argue that the differentsenses of one particle verb are interrelated through a core meaning; they are extended andreextended from the core meaning. And the motivations of the extension are metaphor, metonymyand image-schema transformation. We adopt the theories of prototype and Lakoff's radial category in the study. In Lakoff'sopinion, a word has its core meaning, namely prototypical meaning, and although senses of theword are slightly different from each other, they are related mutually through the core, and can berepresented by a single word. In this way, multiple meanings of a word form a network andconstruct a complex category. Within this category, meanings extend from the core meaning andthey are presumed to form a radial construction, and for this reason, Lakoff refers to thisconstruction as radial category. And the motivations of the category extension are metaphor,metonymy and image-schema transformation. We hold that these theories would apply to particleverbs as well. To illustrate this, a number of examples are presented and explored in details. In the process of analysis, we first examined three situations in the formation of polysemy, thenthe relatedness of the different senses were demonstrated in the cases of each situation, finally themotivation analysis of each case were presented. In order to provide a vivid illustration, a number ofdiagrams were added to the explanation. Through the analysis, we conclude that the different sensesof particle verbs can be treated as interrelated and the metaphor, metonymy and image-schematransformation can serve as the motivation of the meaning extension.