| An English phrasal verb is an idiomatic combination consisting of a verb and a particle or two particles. Due to their conciseness in form and frequent occurrences in both spoken and written language, phrasal verbs have been an object of many scholars from different perspectives and new products come out constantly. However, many of these researches are conducted from traditional perspective. Relatively few studies are made to account for how the various senses of a phrasal verb are related and how they relate to its component parts. So this thesis attempts to reveal the semantic relations between the overall meaning of a phrasal verb and its components as well as the relatedness between the polysemy of a phrasal verb.This thesis is conducted on the semantics of English phrasal verbs from cognitive perspective. Through the semantic analysis of particles and verbs, we observe that the various meanings of a lexical item are extended from the more prototypical to less prototypical motivated by the mechanisms of metaphor, metonymy and image schema transformations, which is in accordance with the Prototype Theory. Then based on the conceptual integration theory, the thesis investigates the semantics of phrasal verbs. It is found that the various meanings of a phrasal verb are also closely linked. They can form a complex semantic network around the basic meaning. These various meanings are formed through the motivation of conceptual integration.This thesis provides a new angle for those who are engaged in second language teaching or learning. It is expected to be helpful to the learning of English particles, verbs and phrasal verbs as well.Finally, it is suggested that further studies should be made to figure out when and why two selecting candidates can be matched, and it is also proposed that the semantics of combinations of verb plus adverb plus preposition be studied in detail.
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