CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale of the Present Study
Many linguists have acknowledged the importance of multi-word units in developinglearners’ native-like fluency in speech and writing (Moon 1997; Wray 2000, 2002).The status of phrasal verbs as multi-word units is widely recognized (Allerton 2004;Jackondoff 2002; Moon 1998). However, due to their syntactic and semanticcomplexity, polysemousness, high productivity and cross-linguistic structuraldifferences, they have long been the “scourge of the learner” as is mentioned inSinclair (1996). Phrasal verbs therefore present a worthy field of study as far as theEFL learners are concerned. But in literature pertaining to the acquisition of phrasalverbs, the majority focus on avoidance of phrasal verbs (Dagut & Laufer 1985;Hulstijn & Marchena 1989; Laufer & Eliasson 1993; Liao & Fukuya 2002; Zhang Bin2007) and few put emphasis on the use of phrasal verbs by EFL learners.Phraseology also has an important role in lexicography. Xu Hai (2013) points outthat the inclusion of an abundance of collocations, phrasal verbs, and idioms in theirentries constitutes one of the distinctive features of the “Big Six” English learners’dictionaries as opposed to dictionaries for native speakers. However, we foundproblems pertaining to representation of phrasal verbs by EFL learners’ dictionariessuch as verb-centered grouping of phrasal verbs which fail to account for themeaning relationship between phrasal verbs. Although Mu Xiaoyan (2007) putsforward a tentative model for the optimization of presentation of phrasal verbs inEnglish-Chinese Learners’ Dictionaries, she does not put her emphasis on themeaning presentation of phrasal verbs and fails to reveal the cognitive motivation ofphrasal verbs, which we think is very important for learners.
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1.2 Objectives and Significance of the Present Study
The present study firstly examines Chinese EFL learners’ problems in the use ofphrasal verbs. Then, based upon the findings as well as conceptual metaphor theory, atentative model of the representation of phrasal verbs in EFL learners’ dictionaries,which aspires to reveal the cognitive motivation of phrasal verbs, will be put forward. The study will be conducted by looking into the naturally occurring data ofEnglish produced by Chinese learners. A corpus investigation as well as a naturalsemantic classification test will be carried out to address the first research question.The learner data under investigation come from the learner corpus CLEC, and CLOBwill be employed as the reference corpora. The corpus concordance applicationsoftware Wordsmith Tools 5.0 will be employed to retrieve the occurrences of phrasalverbs in the learner corpora, and a fine-grained analysis will be conducted on eachand every concordance lines. Comparison will be made on the register, frequency andsemantic transparency of the phrasal verbs. Errors will be identified, categorized andexplained. The difference in the quantitative use and semantic richness of phrasalverbs between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers will be shown.
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CHAPTER TWOPRELIMINARIES AND RELEVANT STUDIESON PHRASALVERBS
2.1 Preliminaries on Phrasal Verbs
Research into phrasal verbs has long been bedeviled by problems pertaining to theirdefinition. It is daunting for researchers to see a battery of definitions as to what aphrasal verb is, yet it is a nettle that has to be grasped.Quirk et al. (1985) categorize multi-word lexical verbs into phrasal verbs,prepositional verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs, and defined phrasal verbs asmulti-word units followed by an adverbial particle (e.g. carry out, find out and pickup). He further pointed out that these adverbial phrases all bear spatial or locativemeanings (e.g. out, in, down, up, on, off) but commonly used with extended meanings.It is blatantly clear that Quirk’s definition of phrasal verbs is in conformity with somenon-dictionary oriented linguists such as Greenbaum (1996a), Lipka (1972),McArthur (1989), who would only acknowledge verb-adverb combinations as thestatus of phrasal verbs. However, most phrasal verb dictionaries, such as Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (1983), the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of PhrasalVerbs (1989), NTC’s Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs and Other Idiomatic VerbalPhrases (1993), Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English (1993) and theCambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (1997), include not onlyphrasal verbs (according to Quirk et al.’s definition), but also prepositional verbs, i.e.verbs with a specified preposition such as rely on, and phrasal-prepositional verbs(such as put up with). Waibel (2007) in his corpus-based study of phrasal verbs onGerman and Italian students incorporates what Quirk et al.
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2.2 Relevant Studies on Phrasal Verbs
In this section, we will briefly sketch a review of relevant studies on phrasal verbsfrom the perspective of generative approach, traditional semantic approach,corpus-based approach, cognitive approach, language acquisition and lexicography. The main suggestions on the analysis of phrasal verbs by generative linguists can bebriefly summarized as small-clause analysis (Dikken 1995; Guéron 1990; Kayne 1985;Stowell 1983), extended-VP-analysis (Harley & Noyer 1998; Koizumi 1993; Nicole2002; Radford 1997), particles as functional category-analysis (Dehé 2000a; Solà1996), information structure analysis (Dehé 2002), and VCP analysis (Cheng Jie2010). All these syntactic approaches focus too much on the form and structure ofphrasal verb such as the order of the object of the verb and the particle or preposition,accounting little for their meaning. By traditional semantic approach we aspire to distinguish it from cognitive approachto phrasal verbs. Bolinger (1971) may be the pioneer in the discussion of the semanticfeatures of particles. He believes that particles carry the meaning focus of phrasalverbs, and the change in the particle’s position may result in the change in meaning.Lipka (1972) entertains a slightly different view that particles contribute meaning tosome phrasal verbs but not to all.
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CHAPTER THREE THE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF PHRASAL VERBS....19
3.1 CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY.......19
3.2 NOTIONS IN CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY......22
3.3 CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY AND THE SEMANTICS....26
3.4 THE ANALYSIS OF THE SEMANTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS ....27
3.5 SUMMARY ........32
CHAPTER FOUR PINNING DOWN CHINESE EFL LEARNERS’ PROBLEMS............33
4.1 ERROR ANALYSIS ON CHINESE EFL LEARNERS’ USE OF PHRASAL VERBS...........33
4.2 CONTRASTIVE INTERLANGUAGE ANALYSIS ON CHINESE.......35
4.3 PROCEDURES OF THE PRESENT STUDY...........35
4.4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF THE STUDY .....40
4.5 SUMMARY.........49
CHATER FIVE DIFFICIENTIES OF THE PRESENTATION OF PHRASALVERBS ............51
5.1 DICTIONARIES UNDER INVESTIGATION IN THE SURVEY....51
5.2 PROBLEMS WITH THE DEFINITION OF PHRASAL VERBS IN “BIG SIX”............52
5.3 SUMMARY.........55
CHAPTER SIXOPTIMIZING THE PRESENTATION OF PHRASAL VERBS INEFL LEARNER DICTIONARIES
6.1 Guiding Principles for the Presentation of Phrasal Verbs in EFL Learner Dictionaries
We will incorporate the research findings into the presentation of phrasal verbs. As weare mainly concerned with the definition of phrasal verbs in Chinese EFL learnerdictionaries, we will only brief on the principles guiding the definition of phrasalverbs.Firstly, Zhang Yihua (2007: 291-292, 2009: 162-163) claims that the analysis onword meaning should be based upon cognitive linguistic theories such as conceptualmetaphor theory and image schema theory, which reveal the cognitive motivation forpolysemy and provide learners with the semantic network of lexical items.Conceptual metaphor theory and image schema theory can be applied to sensedemarcation of phrasal verbs, which reflects the representation of our mental lexiconand facilitates dictionary users to grasp an overall picture of the semantic network of acertain lexical item. It is also suggested that the senses that have cognitive linksshould be grouped together. This approach of sense arrangement is under the rubric of conceptual categorization and cognitive economy principle. The aforementioned viewbuttresses our tentative model for the presentation of phrasal verbs with theoreticalbasis.
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CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we will draw a conclusion of the present research. The researchfindings, implications, limitations and avenues for further research will be stated. In the present study, we aspire to optimize the presentation of phrasal verbs inChinese EFL learners’ dictionaries. Firstly, Chinese EFL learners’ problems anddifficulties pertaining to the use of phrasal verbs were detected through a corpusinvestigation, a natural semantic classification test, and an interview. Then weconducted surveyed the “Big Six” and revealed the deficiencies pertaining to thepresentation of phrasal verbs in learner dictionaries. Subsequent to that, we carried outa fine-grained analysis on the semantics of phrasal verbs based upon ConceptualMetaphor Theory. Based upon all these mentioned above, we put forward a tentativemodel for the presentation of phrasal verbs in EFL learner dictionaries. The researchfindings can be summarized as below.
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