Your browser does not support the PubReader view.
Go to this page to see a list of supporting browsers.
The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 24, No. 0, pp.62-85
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2024
Received 13 Nov 2023 Revised 16 Dec 2023 Accepted 13 Jan 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.24..202401.62

Phrasal Verbs with “Around” and “About” as a Grammatical Pattern

Ekaterina Chon
Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature Mokpo National University 1666 Yeongsan-ro, Cheonggye-myeon Muan, Korea, Tel: 061-450-2114 ekaterinajeong@gmail.com


© 2024 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The paper explores the semantics of phrasal verbs, focusing on two groups with particles “around” and “about” that share the meaning of aimless or silly actions. The study suggests to treat them as a grammatical pattern, proposing a framework that imposes semantic constraints on the verb and particle combinations. The research focuses on delineating the grammatical patterns and semantic restrictions, showcasing how the verbs and particles align within these constructions within corpus data. The study highlights the significance of these patterns, emphasizing their role in understanding language use beyond the sum of individual parts. Beyond traditional lexical analyses, this research illuminates the pragmatic and semantic regularities within these phrasal verbs. A formal representation is introduced to illustrate how the pattern may be represented in mental lexicon. This approach is tested with another group of phrasal verbs featuring the particle “up,” emphasizing the notions of completeness and carelessness. The study highlights the importance of examining synonymity and recognizing grammatical patterns beyond traditional lexical analyses. It asserts that while not all phrasal verbs may fit these patterns, they provide valuable insights into language use, revealing the dynamic relationship between verb semantics, particle meanings, and pragmatic considerations.

Keywords:

corpus, cognitive semantics, construction grammar, grammatical pattern, particles, phrasal verbs, synonymity

References

  • Beers-Fägersten, K. 2007. Swear word offensiveness. Saarland Working Papers in Linguistics (SWPL) 1, 14-37.
  • Booij, G. 2010. Construction morphology. Language and Linguistics Compass 4(7), 543-555. [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2010.00213.x]
  • Cappelle, B. 2005. Particle Patterns in English: A Comprehensive Coverage. Doctoral dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
  • Cappelle, B., Y. Shtyrov and F. Pulvermüller. 2010. Heating up or cooling up the brain? MEG evidence that phrasal verbs are lexical units. Brain and Language 115, 89-201. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2010.09.004]
  • Davies, M. 2008. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Available online at https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/, .
  • Deignan, A. 2010. The evaluative properties of metaphors. In G. Low, Z. Todd, A. Deignan and L. Cameron, eds., Researching and Applying Metaphor in Real World, 357-374. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. [https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.26.21dei]
  • Đurović, T. 2010. Beavering away or monkeying around: Metaphoricity of phrasal verbs related to animals, In G. Raţă, ed., Teaching Foreign Languages: Languages for Special Purposes, 330-342. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Fillmore, C. 1982. Frame semantics. In The Linguistic Society of Korea, ed., Linguistics in the Morning Calm: Selected Papers from SICOL-1981, 111-137. Seoul: Hanshin Pub. Co.
  • Fillmore, C., P. Kay and M. O’Connor. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of LET ALONE. Language 64, 501-538. [https://doi.org/10.2307/414531]
  • Goatly, A. 2011. Metaphor as resource for the conceptualisation and expression of emotion. In K. Ahmad, ed., Affective Computing and Sentiment Analysis, 13-25. Dordrecht: Springer. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1757-2_2]
  • Goddard, C. 2015. “Swear words” and “curse words” in Australian (and American) English. At the crossroads of pragmatics, semantics and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics 12(2), 189-218. [https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2015-0010]
  • Goldberg, A. E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Goldberg, A. E. 2016. Tuning in to the verb-particle construction in English. In L. Nash and P. Samvelian, eds., Approaches to Complex Predicates, 110-141. Leiden, Boston: Brill. [https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004307094_006]
  • Grady, J. 1997. Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
  • Haslam, N., S. Loughnan and P. Sun. 2011. Beastly: What makes animal metaphors offensive? Journal of Language and Social Psychology 30(3), 311–325. [https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X11407168]
  • Hilpert, M. 2014. Construction Grammar and its Application to English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Im, S. 2008. Animal metaphors in English and Korean: Analysis and connotation. The Journal of Linguistic Science 46, 83-100.
  • Jackendoff, J. 2002. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Oxford: Oxford Academic. [https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198270126.001.0001]
  • Jay, T. and K. Janschewitz. 2008. The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research 4, 267-288. [https://doi.org/10.1515/JPLR.2008.013]
  • Johnson, C. 1999. Metaphor vs. conflation in the acquisition of polysemy: The case of see. In M. Hiraga, C. Sinha and S. Wilcox, eds., Cultural, Typological and Psychological Perspectives in Cognitive Linguistics, 155-169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.152.12joh]
  • Kövecses, Z. 2010. Metaphor. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Lakoff, G. and C. Johnson.1980. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. [https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001]
  • López Rodríguez, I. 2009. Of women, bitches, chickens and vixens: Animal metaphors for women in English and Spanish. Cultural Studies Journal of Universitat Jaume I 7, 77-100.
  • Mahpeykar, N. and A. Tyler. 2015. A principled cognitive linguistics account of English phrasal verbs with up and out. Language and Cognition 7, 1– 35. [https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2014.15]
  • McCarthy, D., B. Keller and J. Carroll. 2003. Detecting a continuum of compositionality in phrasal verbs. Proceedings of the ACL 2003 Workshop on Multiwordexpressions: Analysis, Acquisition and Treatment 18, 73–80. [https://doi.org/10.3115/1119282.1119292]
  • Morgan, P. S. 1997. Figuring out figure out: Metaphor and the semantics of the English verb-particle construction. Cognitive Linguistics 8, 327-357. [https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1997.8.4.327]
  • Muhammad, N. N. and M. S. Rashid. 2014. Cat metaphors in Malay and English proverbs. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 118(19), 335-342. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.02.046]
  • Panther, K. 2014. Metaphor and metonymy shaping grammar: The role of animal terms in expressive morphology and syntax. In G. Drożdż, and A. Ƚyda, eds., Extension and Its Limit, 10-38. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Pragglejaz Group. 2007. MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 22(1), 1-39. [https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms2201_1]
  • Radden, G. 1996. Motion metaphorized: The case of coming and going. In E. H. Casad, ed., Cognitive Linguistics in the Redwoods: The Expansion of a New Paradigm in Linguistics, 423-458. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110811421.423]
  • Rudzka-Ostyn, B. 2003. Word Power: Phrasal Verbs and Compounds: A Cognitive Approach. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197235]
  • Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. J. 2002. From semantic underdetermination via metaphor and metonymy to conceptual interaction. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum 6(1), 107-141. [https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2002.006]
  • Stefanowitsch, A. and S. T. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2), 209-243. [https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.8.2.03ste]
  • Taylor, J. R. 1993. Prepositions: Patterns of polysemization and strategies of disambiguation. In C. Zelinsky-Wibbelt, ed., The Semantics of English Prepositions: From Mental Processing to Natural Language Processing, 151-175. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Tomasello, M. 2005. Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard university press. [https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv26070v8]
  • Tyler, A. and V. Evans. 2003. The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486517]