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The
Metaphoric in Recent Cognitive Approaches to English Phrasal Verbs[1]
René
Dirven (Rene.Dirven@pandora.be)
Abstract Cognitive linguistics is a multi-faceted enterprise,
combining more syntactic-conceptual approaches with more semantic-conceptual
ones. In the former, metaphor is downplayed, in the latter it is ever further
exploited. But also the traditional syntactic-semantic approach is very vigorous;
only it could profit by more input from the metaphorical drive. These different
tendencies are exhibited in various analyses of phrasal verbs. 0.
Introduction As
a preliminary definition, phrasal verbs can be said to possess some degree of
idiomaticity in the assembly of the verb plus preposition (cry over something),
or verb plus separable particle (run up the flag, run the flag up),
verb plus inseparable particle (run up a debt), or the double assembly of
verb plus particle and preposition (face up to problems). Crucial in the
differentiation of phrasal verbs is the special “constructional”
contribution of the original preposition or particle to the whole. Hence any
study of phrasal verbs must also come to grips with the semantics of
prepositions and particles. It is precisely in the area of prepositions and
particles that the output of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) research in the 25 years
of its existence is immense. Apart from the more general discussions by Talmy
(1991), Langacker (1986, 1992), and Lakoff (1987), there have been numerous
in-depth studies of single items or groups of them.[2]
A general characterisation that applies to many of these studies, particularly
to Lakoff (1987), is that they accept a large number of different senses for
each preposition or particle, that they do not bother about the schematic
meaning uniting the various senses of a linguistic form, and that most
non-literal meanings are seen in terms of metaphoric extensions. Recently,
four new studies[3]
have been set up, i.e. Tyler and Evans (In preparation), Morgan (1997), Hampe
(2000), and Gries (1997, 1999). The paper by Tyler and Evans can be
characterised, roughly speaking, as ‘a-metaphorical’ in orientation, whereas
Morgan and Hampe continue and further extend the ‘metaphorical drive’. In
contrast to these exclusively semantic oriented studies, Gries also concentrates
on the syntax of verb-particle constructions, especially on the possibilities of
particle placement. The present paper highlights the main gains made by each of
these approaches, while simultaneously making some of their unstated or implicit
views more explicit. The need for a fully integrated syntactic-semantic approach
is strongly emphasised. 1. Tyler and Evans’ minimal-specification view Although
Tyler and Evans do not specifically concentrate on phrasal verbs, their indirect
contribution to the field of phrasal verbs deserves attention. Seen from the
angle of theory building, the authors expand on the most valuable insights of
cognitive linguistics, combining them also with insights from pragmatics,
especially Grice’s theory of implicatures. In this way, they develop a new and
original theoretical framework for CL. Their
theory is a balanced phenomenologist view[4]
(although they do not use this term). In their view of the relationship between
the mind and the world they accept the existence of a real world, which is
however only accessible to man by perception so that we can only deal with a
“represented” real world, or a “projected” world, as Jackendoff calls
it. The
representation of the real experiential world in our mind forms our conceptual
system. The meaning of language lies in this conceptual world. In our use of
linguistic forms we can and only do offer a minimal specification of our
representation of the real world. Because of this minimal specification provided
by linguistic forms, a large amount of information is to be inferred from the
hearer’s knowledge of the world. Here the theory of implicatures has its main
function. In our understanding of a sentence, such as The cat jumped over the
wall, we have the mental representation of an arc with the points A, B, C,
but in their “minimalist” view this arc is not part of the meaning of the
linguistic form over. The preposition over does not describe the
whole trajectory (arc) of the cat’s motion, but, of all the possible elements
in the much richer global reality, it only encodes the verticality notion of
“higher than and proximate to some point”. Thus, the cat’s jump is
conceptualised as a scene, consisting of a point A, where the cat is at the
lowest point, a point B, when the cat arrives at the top of the arc, and finally
a point C, where the cat lands at the other lowest level. This richer
information is not expressed in the sentence as such, but thanks to the
integration of our knowledge of linguistic forms and our general background
knowledge of the world we can construct the rich interpretations that we need in
interaction. The
authors call their view of language the minimal-specification view. Such a view
has important repercussions for the analysis of linguistic forms, e.g. the
description of over. Since this particle, in its proto-image, which is
the authors’ term for “a central image schema”, does not represent the
whole arc ABC, but only the point B, it merely has – as just stated – the
basic meaning of “higher than and proximate to”. In this basic meaning, over
is only static, not dynamic (whereas most authors claim that many particles and
prepositions have two basic sets of meaning, i.e. static and dynamic ones). In
the authors’ view, dynamic interpretations of prepositions rather result from
the contextual information provided by dynamic verbs like jump. In this
view, the authors may have overlooked the reality of automatically operating
metonymic processes. Once a given form is regularly associated with a contextual
meaning, this may become part of the form’s extended meaning. In fact, all
this is a question of conventional implicatures: once a conversational
implicature gets entrenched in the language, it becomes part of the meaning of a
linguistic expression. This also shows that the issue of conventional
implicatures itself is a question of metonymy.[5]
Since no arguments are provided as to why the trajectory in the form of an arc
ABC is only given in the represented reality itself, and not in the linguistic
concept(s) which over symbolises, each of the two views seems plausible,
to say the least. Together
with their minimal-specification view, the authors also develop an
experientially-based explanation for the phenomena of meaning extension and
polysemy. This experiential basis is what they call “perceptual correlation”.
This means that two different events or states are seen to co-occur so often
that we can take their co-occurrence for granted, and can focus on the whole
complex scene, or on any part of the scene. Thus in the case of (jump)
over, we can focus on the whole trajectory or only on the second part of the
trajectory, while describing the first. That is, when moving over point B, we
can focus on the whole of the trajectory ABC or on any point in this trajectory:
either point B itself, or a point beyond B, which yields the sense of
“on-the-other-side-of” as in over the mountains; or we can focus on
the motion towards C, which yields the “transfer” sense of (hand sth.)
over; or additionally, we can focus on the moment when the motion arrives at
point C: at this point the motion has completed the arc, which explains the
sense of “completed” as in the lecture is over. Tyler and Evans’
observations can be summarised in the following semantic network, whereby we
keep their meaning clusters and the senses of over belonging to each
cluster intact, but rearrange and structure the whole in the form of a radial
network.
These
senses are illustrated in the following set of sentences: (0)
He jumped over the wall. (1)
a. Arlington is over
the Potomac River from Georgetown. b.
The film is over. c.
Sally turned the keys of the office over to the janitor. (2)
The tablecloth is over the table. (3)
a. Mary looked over the manuscript quite carefully. b.
The little boy cried over his broken toy. (4)
a. Jerome found over forty kinds of shells on the beach.
aa. The heavy rain caused the river to flow over its banks. b.
She has a strange power over me. c.
I would prefer tea over coffee. (5)
a. The fence fell over. aa.
After the false-start they started the race over. The
attractiveness of the authors’ view is that in their application of Lakoff and
Johnson’s (1999) notion of “the experiential or embodied basis of meaning”,
they have even surpassed Lakoff’s (1987: 416ff.) own analysis of over
with its 24 different senses. In the authors’ new analysis, these have been
reduced to half that number. But
there is more to give their proposal cautious credit. First the authors manage
to account for the fact that over, as a case in point, has different
clusters of senses such as (1) the ABC trajectory cluster, (2) the Coverage
schema, (3) the Verticality cluster, (4) the Up cluster, and (5) the
Reflexive cluster (see the representation in Figure 1). Also the extensions
within each cluster of senses are fully motivated. Further, the coherence of the
clusters of senses within the whole semantic network of over has been
accounted for. Finally, by doing all this the authors have shown the usefulness
of the very notion of semantic network itself, the value of which has lately
come to be slightly questioned as a descriptive tool (see e.g. Taylor 1995). By
introducing the notion of “perceptual correlation”, the authors manage to
reduce the traditionally heavy reliance on metaphor as an all-explanatory
principle for meaning extension, as is still practised in most of Lakoff’s and
also Sweetser’s analyses. Whereas Langacker (1987: 168ff.) seems to adopt a
critical and tentative a-metaphorical attitude, the authors very strongly pursue
this non-metaphorical avenue. Even in their explanation for the use of see and
vision in the meaning of “know” and “understand” they claim that,
given the perceptual basis of human experience, it is clear that ‘seeing’
and ‘knowing’ things are perceptual correlates and that we can focus on
either of them to mean the other.[6] The question is, however,
whether this is not a matter of implicature rather than of “perceptual
correlation” or both, and whether implicature and perceptual correlation are
not just two different names and views of the same phenomenon? Whatever the
answer, this does not mean that the authors reject the reality of conceptual
metaphors. On the contrary. But they combine it with the notion of “perceptual
correlation” and thus it can hopefully help to clarify the boundaries of
metaphor and to add more balance to the all-explanatory force attributed to
metaphor. In
contrast to the previous approach, which reduces the impact of metaphor and
tries to exploit the potential of “perceptual correlation” and/or
implicatures, the following approaches try to fully explore the metaphorical
potential of language and thought. 2.
The metaphorical drive 2.1.
Morgan’s re-interpretation of Lindner’s findings Morgan’s
study is conceived as a tribute to the first cognitive analysis of particle
verbs by Lindner (1983). Not only are most of Lindner’s examples used again,
but also her non-metaphorical analyses are closely considered, and supplemented
with deeper metaphorical interpretations. Morgan (1977: 355) sees four
possibilities for metaphorical extensions with a verb-particle construction, e.g.
take out, whereby the particle out presupposes the prior existence
of a container, either literally, metaphorically, metonymically or otherwise. (6)
Extension possibilities for verbs:
VERB
CONTAINER a.
I took the mug out of the box:
literal
literal b.
We fished out the ring (from
the bowl):
metaphorical
literal c.
We handed out the brochures
:
literal
metaphorical d.
We picked out a name for the baby:
metaphorical
metaphorical
Only
in the literal sense of (6a) is there a common literal source domain for verb
and preposition. In all the other cases there isn’t a common source domain,
but two different ones. Thus in (6c) the verb hand denotes the literal
manipulation of an object, but there is no “literal” container. Here the
pile of brochures, or more generally, any set of similar things, is seen as a
container. Many domains can be metaphorically seen as containers. Thus a source/origin/center,
a set, a field, a previous boundary, possession, and inaccessibility or
‘hiddenness’ are all seen as possible effects of a state of containment. The
conceptualisation of these abstract categories as containers also offers an
explanation for the many different meanings of out in particle verbs as
exemplified in (7): (7)
Metaphorisations of the “container” notion: a.
SOURCES ARE CONTAINERS:
cry out, sing out, beach out b.
SETS ARE CONTAINERS:
pick out c.
BOUNDARIES ARE CONTAINERS:
roll out, fill out, lay out, line
out d.
INACCESSIBILITY IS A CONTAINER:
make out, work out, figure out The
full conceptual richness of a particle verb also involves several other
metaphorical processes. Thus the verb to figure out in the title of the
paper is analysed as an instance of manifold metaphorisation, containing
four steps: ¾
The noun-derived verb to figure means ‘to manipulate numbers’
and is a metonymy[7]
based on the notion of ‘number’; via “a conventionalized metaphor
that conceptualizes thinking as a form of calculating” (1997: 343), to
figure is metaphorised into the more abstract meaning of ‘reaching a
solution by thinking’ ¾
The literal use of out, meaning ‘not within the boundaries of a
container’ is “extended to other kinds of accessibility, such as when a
problem is conceptualised as a (blocked) container” (1997: 343). ¾
From these two source domains, i.e. from the verb to figure via
the conceptual metaphor thinking is
calculating, and from the particle out via the conceptual metaphor
a problem is a (locked) container, the new compound verb to figure out
has developed one target domain, meaning “to make a solution cognitively
accessible by thinking”. Thus the particle verb to figure out becomes
an integrated construction, both semantically and syntactically. ¾
Finally, according to Morgan, on the basis of the metaphor accessible is out, visible is out (see (7d) above),
the conceptual metaphor knowing is seeing is
also involved, so that the full conceptual content of to figure out a
solution means “causing something to be known by thinking about it”
(1997: 345). The
paper thus shows that a highly systematic analysis of the various classes of
particle verbs is possible. But as with Tyler and Evans, this paper does not
discuss the syntactic status of the items under scrutiny such as out. In
fact, its real form as a preposition is the compound item out of as in
(6a). The alternation between the two forms out and out of thus
reveals that the difference between preposition and non-preposition status is
real.[8]
Another important fact is that the four possibilities of meaning
extension summed up in (6) are not exhaustive. In addition to the input of
purely literal meanings, the input for a particle verb may also be a metonymic/metaphorical
verb, as the following paper by Hampe has shown. 2.2.
Hampe’s metaphorical view of “to face up to” Hampe (2000) deals with a fifth case in addition to Morgan’s cases of metaphorisation in the formation of a verb-particle construction. When the verb-particle construction to face up to is formed, the verb to face is already a figurative verb, whereby part of a person, i.e. the face, metonymically stands for the whole person. Moreover, there is a double extension from to face into to face up to. Hampe’s analysis convincingly shows that to face problems is not simply synonymous with to face up to problems. With the simple verb we can have both human and non-human subjects (8a, b).) But the compositional meaning of to face up to only allows an agent-driven construal (9a). (8) a We faced serious problems b. Serious problems faced us. (9) a. We are facing up to a huge problem. b. *A huge problem is facing up to us.
Just
as Morgan deals with out in to figure out, Hampe (2000: 92) claims
that the particle up in to face up to is motivated by conceptual
metaphors in multiple ways and she makes an important generalisation: “This
simultaneous motivation by more than one conceptual metaphor is a very common
property of particles in a verb-particle construction.” First the event of
being confronted with a problem is structured in terms of the physical
experience of “facing” them. The much more specific, and hence richer,
meaning of the particle verb up to in comparison with the single verb to
face, results from the three metaphorical extensions of the components face,
up and to. The
element face in to face up to has, just like the simple verb to
face, the sense of
“being situated in front of or opposite some entity”. This location sense
also explains why the simple verb to face in (8) allows both human and
non-human subjects. This location sense of to face is widened into a
general experiential sense of confrontation by means of the complex “event
structure metaphor”. The domain of event structure is a cover term for a whole
chain of events and states subsuming not only locations, states and events or
changes (of state), but also causes (of changes), actions (as self-generated
changes), purposes (of actions), means (for realising actions), difficulties
encountered when acting, and its sub-metaphor PROBLEMS ARE OBSTACLES. By mapping this event structure onto the location sense of the particle
verb, its component to face now means “to confront something”. The
stative location verb has now assumed a dynamic action sense. The
two components up and to add very rich extension possibilities,
too. The particle up evokes the verticality or up-down orientation
and of this source domain it is “the upper limit of the verticality
orientation” that is added to the event structure of to face. This
physical space domain is the source domain for many different metaphorisations
all suggesting positive values, such as close
is up, activity is up, control is up, competition is up. Of these and
several other possibilities, the face up to construction incorporates the
notions of “activity, control, and completion”. Finally, the preposition to
denotes a physical goal in space. As a conceptual metaphor, to implies
“motion towards an abstract entity” such as a problem, a difficulty, etc. Each
of these three metaphor systems contributes to the compositional global meaning
of to face up to as “to actively confront an entity that poses a
problem, a difficulty for one’s further actions”. However, the schematic
meaning of to face up to transcends this compositional structure, since
it also encompasses the notion of an “energetic human agent” and that of “emotionality”.
In this sense the construction is strongly idiomatic. Thus with Goldberg (1995:
4) we could say that the particle verb to face up to instantiates the
construction schema ‘verb + up to,’ which contains the additional
senses of “energetic agent” and of “emotionality”, which is inherited by
each instantiation that the construction schema sanctions. The
additional semantic components of speaker emotions and attitudes may have arisen
as conversational implicatures which have gradually become conventionalised (these
terms are not used by Hampe). This seems to be confirmed by the corpus-based
contexts in which to face up to occurs: these contexts typically
carry stylistic connotations of colloquial language/slang or evaluative
connotations and are very frequently metaphor/metonymy/idiom contexts. Whereas
Hampe thus makes a first inroad into syntactic aspects of particle verbs (see
the opposition between (8) and (9)), this avenue is not further explored in the
rest of the paper. Here Gries has made important progress. 3. Gries’s approach to transitive particle verbs and
particle placement Gries
(1997, 1999) focuses on a subclass of particle verbs, i.e. transitive particle
verbs, and on the ensuing question of particle placement after the verb itself
or after the direct object. Although this seems to narrow down the scope of
particle verb research at first sight, it rather widens the horizon in that it
unites the syntactic and semantic properties of the whole construction. Moreover,
Gries’s work is a corpus-based study, the results of which may have , next to
their merits, some debatable implications. First, Gries says he wants to evade
the terminological discussion about the status of up as a preposition or
an adverb and proposes to replace both by the term particle so that we do
not have to use different labels for the analysis of up in (10a, b, c). (10)
a. He ran up the hill / * He
ran the hill up. b.
He ran up the flag / He ran the flag up. c.
He ran up a huge bill / *He ran a huge bill up. But
as (10c) with its fully idiomatic meaning shows, the problem is not so simple.
If, as the traditional grammatical analysis says, in (10a) we have a preposition
and in (10b) an adverb, the question remains as to the possible word status of up
in (10c). It seems to be neither a preposition nor an adverb, so that we have at
least three different subclasses, i. e. prepositions, adverbial particles, and
‘pure’ particles. In
an earlier analysis, Yeagle (1983: 119ff.) had invoked the contrast between
landmark and trajector to account for the ungrammaticality of *He ran the
hill up in (10a). If the trajector (he) is modified by the
form up, the particle cannot follow the landmark. But if the landmark (the
flag) is affected as in (10b), the particle can follow it and denotes a
resultant state. Gries (1997: 5 fn. 7) criticises this statement, since it
“offers no explanation for the observed pattern (that a particle should not
follow its landmark).” Instead, he suggests the following explanation for
Yeagle’s generalisation, namely: “We can only speculate that this might be a
consequence of some iconic principle that has by Lakoff and Johnson (1980:
128ff.) been termed CLOSENESS IS STRENGTH
OF EFFECT. This certainly goes in the right direction, but does not
explain the landmark’s behavior. It seems to me that the far-reaching
implications of the position of the particle “up” in (10b) has not yet been
accounted for in this line of explanation. Quite
legitimately, Gries wants to concentrate on his own research objective, which is
the alternation between the two structural possibilities of particle placement
with transitive particle verbs: the post-verb position (construction 1) as in
(11a) or the post-DO (direct object) position (construction 2),[9]
as in (11b). (11)
a. He picked up a pencil.
Construction 1:
post-verb position b.
He picked the pencil up.
Construction 2: post-DO position Traditionally
many diverse and unrelated explanations have been offered for the alternation of
particle placement in (11), which Gries (1999: 119) summarises under four
factors: (1) phonological factors such as a (contrastively) stressed direct
object, (2) syntactic factors such as a full-lexical NP, a definite or
indefinite NP, a complex NP (with embedded relative clause), or a preposition
phrase following the particle, e.g. pick something up from the floor, (3)
semantic factors such as referentially vague objects (such as matters or
things) which require little attention, and the factor of idiomaticity as in
lay down the law, vs. *lay the law down, and, (4) discourse factors such
as the distance to the last mention of the referent or to its next mention. The
idiomatic expression lay down the law is similar to (10c) in that in both
cases the particle can no longer denote a resultant state. In the idiomaticising
process the particle has become part of a new idiomatic unit in which the
meaning of the two components is not assembled to form a composite meaning, but
which has a different meaning altogether so that the particle no longer has its
own meaning. The
deeper principle which Gries proposes as the underlying principle for all the
four or more factors adduced in the literature, and which he empirically
explores in a corpus, is the consciousness principle, manifesting itself in the
degree of attention needed to set up mental contact with the NP’s referent. He
formulates his consciousness hypothesis as follows: “construction 1 will be
preferred with objects requiring a high amount of consciousness and construction
2 will be preferred with objects requiring none or only a limited amount of
consciousness for their processing” (Gries 1997: 64). The degree of
consciousness is in its turn determined by two conditions (in the order of
importance as given here, which is not emphasized by Gries): the discourse
context and the entrenchment of the linguistic form denoting a referent. Objects
that are new in the discourse context like a pencil in (11a) prefer
construction 1, whereas objects that are accessible or active via the discourse
context preferably occur in construction 2 as in (11b). Similarly, according to
Gries (1997: 64), poorly entrenched objects prefer construction 1, but fairly
well entrenched objects are more frequent and therefore more acceptable in
construction 2. The degree of entrenchment is partly, though not solely, equated
with the reverse of the Silverstein Hierarchy (SH), such that nouns/referents at
level 1 in Table 2 are least entrenched and forms/referents at level 11 in Table
2 are most entrenched. Table
2. The Silverstein Hierarchy (according to Deane) 1.
Abstract entities 2.
Sensual entities 3.
Locations 4.
Containers 5.
Concrete objects 6.
Animate beings (other than humans) 7.
Kin terms 8.
Proper names 9.
3rd person singular pronoun 10.
2nd person singular pronoun 11.
1st person singular pronoun The
Silverstein Hierarchy offers a plausible explanation for the fact that with
pronouns referring to an abstract referent such as malaria we can use
construction 2 only (12a), which is sufficient proof that the criterion of the
discourse context overrides the Silverstein Hierarchy. When the same anaphoric
reference is made by means of a superordinate abstract noun like disease
(level 1 in SH), we tend to find, in the large majority of cases, construction 1
as in (12b), which is in clear contrast with the use of construction 2 with
concrete objects as in (11b) He picked the pencil up. (12)
a. He has got malaria. He picked it up in Kenya. b.
He has got malaria. He picked up that disease in Kenya. c.
He has got malaria. He picked THAT disease up in Kenya. But
it appears now also construction 2 is acceptable for 9 out of 10 informants[10],
for 8 without any reservation, for one under the condition of a stressed form,
indicated by upper case. Thus we have a striking similarity between (12a) and
(12c). In (12a) the definiteness of the referent is directly linked to a
previous mention in the discourse; in (12b, c) the link is made via the
intervening superordinate abstract category disease, which in spoken
language (12c) can be stressed and is potentially more in focus. Even if the
situation is still more complex than Gries supposes, his merit is that he has
come up with a semantic principle. What was traditionally considered to be a
purely syntactic rule (a pronominal direct object always takes construction 2,
unless specially stressed) is now explained by Gries as a consequence of a
semantic principle, i.e. a contextual and a conceptual constraint, which follow
from the theory of the amount of consciousness needed to access a referent. Not
yet present in Gries’s approach is the insight that this semantic principle
even overrides the Silverstein hierarchy: if an abstract noun clearly operates
in an anaphoric context, it is equally easily accessible and allows construction
2 as in (12c). But if no overriding factors are active, the preferred
construction with idiomatic particle verbs is construction 1 as in (12b). A
further factor reflected upon in Gries (1997, 1999) is the nature of the lexical
item, i.e. the habitual or idiomatic sense of the verb. Thus the extreme
difference between the literal meaning of to pick up in to pick up a
pencil and its idiomatic sense in to pick up a disease is very
obvious. Gries (1999: 127) himself discusses the intermediate case of to pick
up speed, which he sees as an instance of metaphor, and not of idiom, since
the figurative sense of to pick up speed is due to the abstract
character of the noun speed, which also reduces the literalness of pick
up. Indeed, this expression means ‘increase speed’, and obviously the
metaphorised meaning of up, which is based on the conceptual metaphor MORE
IS UP is at work here. A more idiomatic meaning is found in the ‘get by
chance’ sense of pick up in expressions such as pick up a disease/an
accent/a habit, etc. It is not fully idiomatic since the notion of ‘by
chance’ seems to have arisen by implicature. What you pick up, becomes your
possession. It is the metonymic principle ACTION
STANDS FOR EFFECT OF ACTION that leads to pick up’s new sense of
‘acquire’. Since negative
possessions or properties are not desirable, you did not pick them up
intentionally; so you can only have acquired them by chance or bad luck. It is
not unlikely that each figurative particle verb has a story of its own and is,
consequently, to be situated at a different point on the continuum from purely
literal to purely idiomatic meanings. This hypothesis would also explain the
variability in the judgments of native speakers. As
an overall conclusion from the previous discussion, we can support Gries’s
thesis that the alternation between the two structural possibilities (construction
1 and construction 2) applies unproblematically to the prototypical, literal
meanings of the particle verb. But the fact remains that this distribution is
far more complex with the extended, figurative meanings of these verbs. Gries
(1999: 128, 130) argues that in the case of idiomatic constructions such as to
lay down the law one will find construction 1 only, except with pronominal
objects. This is obviously not the full picture. It does not even apply fully to
the extreme cases of fully idiomatic, petrified, dead metaphorical particle
verbs as in ??He laid the law down. Alongside these petrified, purely
idiomatic particle verbs, we have a whole range of partly or globally
metaphorised particle verbs, which explains the oscillations in speakers’
grammaticality judgements. The further reaching conclusion is therefore the
hypothesis, already hinted at before, that the two constructions are not just
alternations, but independent templates. But this is food for thought in further
research.11 Another important conclusion following from the variation
in grammaticality judgments is that a clear distinction has to be worked out
between fully idiomatic, less idiomatic, and newly metaphorised particle verbs.
Here a very refined approach to grammaticality judgments may be a most valuable
source and tool for the further and deeper understanding of grammatical
constructions, which may be seen as the indispensable complementary tool of
corpus-based data. A first attempt has been made in Dirven (Forthcoming). Bibliography Boers,
Frank (1996): Spatial Prepositions and Metaphor: A Cognitive-semantic Journey
along the UP-DOWN and the FRONT-BACK Dimensions, Tübingen. Bolinger,
Dwight (1971): The Phrasal Verb in English, Cambridge, M.A. Brugman,
Claudia (1981): The Story of ‘over’. M.A. Thesis. University of
California, Berkeley, CA. (Also: Duisburg/Essen: LAUD (1983)). Brugman,
Claudia (1988): The Story of ‘over’: Polysemy, Semantics and the
Structure of the Lexicon, New York. Cuyckens,
Hubert (1984): ‘At’ – A typically English preposition, in: Papers and
Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 19, 49-64. Cuyckens,
Hubert (1988): "Spatial prepositions in cognitive semantics", in: Hüllen,
Werner/ Schulze, Rainer (edd.), 316-328. Deane,
Paul D. (1992): Grammar in Mind and Brain: Explorations in Cognitive Syntax.
(Cognitive Linguistics Research), Berlin. Deane,
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[1].
I
wish to thank Stefan Gries for his many suggestions and criticisms of an
earlier draft of this paper, and John Taylor for a number of very valuable
suggestions on its pre-final draft. [2].
Some of the most important ones are: Boers (1996), Bolinger (1971),
Brugman (1981, 1988), Cuyckens (1984, 1988), Deane (1993a,b), Dirven (1989a,
1993), Ekberg (1997), Kaiser (1989), Kalisz and Kubinski (1995),
Kryk-Kastovsky (1995), Lindner (1981, 1982, 1983), Radden (1981, 1989),
Regier (1993), Rice (1993, 1999), Ross (1994), Rubba (1994, 1996),
Rudzka-Ostyn (1985), Sandra and Rice (1995), Schulze (1987, 1990, 1993),
Taylor (1988, 1993), van Oosten (1977). [3].
There are, of course, more studies available, but I selected these
four as highly representative. [4].
See Geeraerts (1985: 355), and Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 181; 1999). [5].
I
owe this suggestion to John Taylor. In fact, while the Tyler/Evans approach
is strongly a-metaphoric, it could profit
enormously from a more metonymic orientation. This especially applies
to their later discussion of the figurative meaning of “seeing is knowing.”
Although this need not be a metaphor, it certainly is a metonym, but not
necessarily a case of correlation. See also fn. 6. [6].
In fact, this is not quite true: whereas seeing may stand for knowing,
knowing does not entail seeing, since there are many different ways of
getting to know things. [7].
For a systematic study of derived verbs as a
result of a metonymical process, see Dirven (1999). [8].
Oxford English Dictionary analyses the complex preposition out
of as consisting of the adverb out and the preposition of. Of thus
renders prepositional status to the adverb out. [9].
Given
the probable historical development from brush the snow/dust off a coat into
brush off the coat, there are good reasons to call the former
construction 1 and the latter construction 2. But synchronically things are
different and construction 1 is the unmarked case. [10].The
presentation by Gries, who marks this example as ungrammatical (*), needs
further precision. Since so many examples following from his proposed rules
or preferences should be ungrammatical, but were judged correct by my
routine informant, I decided to have a quick test with 10 linguists. Their
judgments for 4 sentences are presented below. Sentences
Judgments:
Correct
Uncertain
Incorrect 1.
They laid the law down
4
3
3 2.
He picked that disease up in Keny
9
-
1 3.
She brushed the accusations off
9
-
1 4.
We can't brush the neighbours off again
5
4
1
On the basis of this mini-test, it seems that we cannot star sentence 1,
but should rather give it three question marks (???), representing highest
dubitability. Sentence 4 receives two question marks (??), and one question
mark (?) is not represented. If 9 out of 10 informants accept a sentence, it
would be unfair to give it one question mark (?). It is clear from these
variations in grammaticality judgments that corpus data, however important
they are, cannot tell the whole story.
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