Embodied Analysis Of Generation And Comprehension Of Verb-particle Constructions

Verb-particle construction is one of the most widely used constructions in Englishlanguage. It is also one of the difficulties in English vocabulary learning. An Englishverb-particle construction is composed of a head verb and a particle. The particlesinclude prepositional particles, adjective particles, adverbial particles and verbal particles.Verb-particle constructions with prepositional particles are the most common andproductive ones in these four kinds. Due to the specificity in word formation, semanticand syntax, verb-particle constructions always receive significant attention fromresearchers. Traditional researches pay much attention to the classification, syntaxstructure and semantic of verb-particle constructions. With the developing of cognitivelinguistics, researchers begin to study the semantic of verb-particle constructions fromthe perspective of cognitive linguistics.This research adopts corpus-based method and analytical method to explore theembodiment of the generation and comprehension of verb-particle constructions from theperspective of embodied cognition. Firstly, the author proposes the theoretical frameworkof this study based on several theories. These theories include Lakoff and Johnson’s threeprinciples on embodied cognition, Clark’s four propositions on embodied cognition andWilson’s representative six views on evaluating the embodied cognition. These theoriesprovide a coherent and systematic theoretical framework for analyzing the embodimentof generation and comprehension of verb-particle constructions. Secondly, the authorextracts the typical and representative verb-particle constructions from the corpus as thelinguistic data in the research. That means the verb-particle construction’s frequency ofoccurrence is relatively high in the corpus. There are forty eight verb-particleconstructions in the data, and fifty six example sentences of them are involved in theanalysis. Thirdly, based on the theoretical framework of embodied cognition, the authoranalyzes the generation and comprehension of verb-particle constructions through the selected linguistic data from corpus. At last, it can be found that the generation andcomprehension of verb-particle constructions is closely related with embodied cognition.The research finds that the embodiment of the generation and comprehension ofverb-particle constructions is reflected in the following four aspects. First, the generationprocess of verb-particle constructions is embodied and inherently involves spatialrelations. Second, the comprehension of verb-particle constructions is situated andclosely related to the environment. Third, the comprehension of verb-particleconstructions involves time pressure and action. Fourth, metaphorical thought isnecessary in generating and comprehending verb-particle constructions. Through theanalysis, embodied cognition theory could provide a systematic and reasonableexplanation to the generation and comprehension of verb-particle constructions. Theresearch theoretically enriched the studies on both verb-particle constructions and theembodied cognition theory. It would shine some lights on teaching and learning ofverb-particle constructions.