A Study Of V+over Phrasal Verbs From The Perspective Of Cognitive Semantics

Phrasal verb is defined as a two-word or three-word combination which is composed of a lexical verb and a preposition or a lexical verb and a spacial adverb or a lexical verb and both a spacial adverb and a preposition,such as make up,come over and stand up into.Phrasal verb is one kind of language forms,which is popularly used in both spoken and written language by native speakers.But it is the most difficult and challenging task for Foreign English Learners to master them（Siyanova&Schmitt,2007）.Owing to this problem,an increasing number of linguists and language researchers begin to make researches on phrasal verbs.From the point view of traditional linguistics,the studies of phrasal verbs solely center on their classifications of structure,grammar and semantic features from language itself while cognitive linguists provide a new idea that phrasal verbs are analyzable and then they begin to make researches on the contributions of particle over to the whole meaning of phrasal verbs and the cognitive motivations of phrasal verbs.However,these studies mentioned above pay less attention to the formation mechanism of V+over phrasal verbs.This study adopts the methods of the combination of quantitative and qualitative researches as well as the link between descriptive and explanatory studies to make a research on the formation mechanism of V+over phrasal verbs（also called phrasal verbs with over）collected from COCA corpus.First of all,this study adopts the search strings[v*][p*]over,[v*][n*]over,[v*]over to retrieve and categorize V+over phrasal verbs in COCA corpus.And in addition,these data collected from COCA corpus are analyzed with the help of Excel software and Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary(2^nded.).At last,this study explores the formation mechanism of V+over phrasal verbs on the basis of cognitive semantics.It is found that the high-frequent verbs in V+over phrasal verbs includes motion verbs,change verbs,competition verbs,perception verbs,possession verbs,contact verbs,communicative verbs,cognitive verbs,social interactive verbs and state verbs.Among these verbs,the motion verbs and contact verbs are two largest verbs in number,which accounts for 50 percent of all the verbs in V+over phrasal verbs.In addition,the particle over has 4 basic image schemas of the basic meanings and 11 metaphorical meanings which are formed by the metaphorical mapping of the four basic meanings.Finally,the meanings of V+over phrasal verbs come from the integration of literal meanings of the verbs and literal meanings of particle over,the integration of literal meanings of the verbs and figurative meanings of particle over,the integration of figurative meanings of the verbs and literal meanings of particle over and the integration of figurative meanings of the verbs and figurative meanings of particle over.This study analyzes V+over phrasal verbs from the angle of cognitive semantics in order to provide a new perspective for the future researches on phrasal verbs,English teaching and learning as well as the lexicology.