An Empirical Study On UP&DOWN Phrasal Verb Acquisition From The Perspective Of Metaphor

Metaphor is a very important and effective way of cognition and thinking for human. The thesis exploresthe mechanism of combination and acquisition of UP&DOWN phrasal verbs from the perspective of metaphorin order to benefit the teaching and acquisition. The previous study makes the exploration practical andsignificant. Conceptual integration theory in terms of metaphor provides us with a very effective way to explorethe metaphorical mechanism implied in the PVs. Metaphorical meanings of phrasal verbs are formed by bothverbs and particles, the two sections function more or less differently in different phrasal verbs, in some of thephrasal verbs, verbs function more metaphorically, while in others particles function more, and in other phrasalverbs, the two function equal metaphorically in a degree. The combination of UP&DOWN with verbs canexpresses a range of concepts from concrete to abstract, which greatly expands and activates usages andmeanings of verbs, and can express more and richer meanings by means of a limited vocabulary. Metaphorproves to be the major impetus of semantic extension and can explain the motivation for the multiplicity ofmeanings of a polysemous word.On this basis, key research questions are proposed as whether combinations of different kinds of verbs withUP&DOWN produce and imply different metaphorical meanings and significances, and get the acquisitionprocesses into different difficulties? The author of the thesis hopes to find the different functions, states,significances of metaphors of orientational UP&DOWN, different verbs respectively in PVs and theircombinations, hopes to explore the factors as idiomism, transparency, familiarity, etc. affecting the testing resultstheoretically and empirically in the combination of different verbs with UP&DOWN, to provide a reference forteaching and acquisition of such PVs.Based on the model on the conceptual blending theory, the author designs four graded PVs tests, each ofwhich includes two types(cloze task and translation task) to ensure the validity. The samples in this study are38freshmen majored in English randomly selected from Zhixing College of Northwest Normal University. Theresearch results reflect the primary tendency of the variation from low to high of the metaphorization extents ofdifferent matches of verbs and particles (UP&DOWN). The results of the tests show that there exist significantdifferences among types of PVs. There are significant differences between test1or test2and test3or test4interms of PVs’ metaphorical ability and acquisition difficulty, mainly implied by verbs. On the other hand, theparticles as UP&DOWN play an less important role in defining the significant difference, so there presents nosignificant differences between test1and tese2(test3and test4). One important conclusion drawn from the findings of the study is that verbs in PVs exert the majorinfluence on metaphorical extent and comprehension of PVs. Metaphorical Verbs in PVs determines the wholePVs’ metaphorical extent rather than UP&DOWN, which corresponds with the research hypotheses.Not only verbs and particles as UP&DOWN contribute to the metaphorical extent of the whole PVs, but thediversity, complication and characteristics of them, especially the verbs, determined the metaphorical extent. Itcan be seen that metaphorical awareness and competence are expected to get cultivated and improved in terms ofteaching and acquisition of phrasal verbs, especially verbs.