VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
NGÔ THỊ VIỆT ANH

A STUDY ON SOME PHRASAL VERBS IN BUSINESS
TEXTS IN ENGLISH FROM COGNITIVE SEMANTIC
PERSPECTIVE

(NGHIÊN CỨU NGHĨA CỦA MỘT SỐ CỤM ĐỘNG TỪ
TIẾNG ANH TRONG NGỮ CẢNH TIẾNG ANH KINH TẾ DƯỚI GÓC ĐỘ
NGỮ NGHĨA TRI NHẬN)

M.A. Minor Thesis Field : English Linguistics
Code: 602215


Supervisor: Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm Hanoi, October 2010
iv ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS
ESP: English for Specific Purposes
VPC: Verb Particle Construction
LM: Landmark
TR: Trajector
V: Verb
Adv: Adverb
Obj: Object
Prep: Preposition
AOF: Academy of Finance
* : denote examples taken from online sources.

1.2.3.Image schemas………………………………………………………
1.2.4.Trajector and Landmark…………………………………………….
1.2.5.Perspective and Construal ………………………………………….
1.3. An overview of English phrasal verbs and English particles…………
1.3.1. Phrasal verbs……………………………………………………
1.3.1.1.Definitions of phrasal verbs………………………………
1.3.1.2.Some main types of phrasal verbs……………………………
1.3.2. Particles …………………………… …………………………
1.4. Phrasal Verbs in terms of Cognitive Semantics……….……………
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY… …………………………………………….
2.1. Research Questions ……… …………………………………………
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2.5.2.1.Out means accessible
2.5.2.2.Out means inaccessible
2.5.2.3.Out means expansion
2.5.2.4.Out means abnormal
2.5.2.5.Out means activation
2.5.3. Meaning Transference in Phrasal Verbs with Up…………………
2.5.4. Meaning Transference in Phrasal Verbs with Out………………
CONCLUSION
3.1. Major findings of the study
3.2. Pedagogical implications
3.3.Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research
REFERENCES

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expressive that they are very widely used in native speech, especially in spoken English.
What is more, new phrasal verbs are constantly being created in many fields such as
English for Computing, Medical English, etc. Working as a lecturer of English at Faculty
of English for Finance and Accounting at Academy of Finance, I find that phrasal verbs
make up a huge amount of verbs in business texts and course books that I am using and
want to find out a reasonable explanation for the use of phrasal verbs which cause troubles
in comprehending for students and teachers as well. Apparently, what makes phrasal verbs
so unpredictable is the meaning of the particles, since they seem to be quite arbitrary
themselves, whereas the meaning of the verbs is usually less controversial.
Over the past few years, a cognitive approach to meaning of English particles has
produced good results in explaining numerous possible uses of English particles and how
they are related to one another. Also a lot of attempt has been made by many linguists to
find out whether phrasal verbs are purely idiomatic, less idiomatic or newly metaphorised
or whether they consist related and transparent meaning so that they can be used in a
logical way. From the above facts, I want to apply some recent findings about the meaning
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of particles up and out in Cognitive semantics perspective to the meaning of phrasal verbs
with up and out in Business context.
II. Aims of the study
This study is aimed at
 classifying semantic description of the English phrasal verbs with up and out basing
on contribution of the particles‟ meaning in light of cognitive semantics,
 investigating meaning transference of phrasal verbs with up and out
 and drawing out pedagogical implications for teaching and learning English phrasal
verbs.
Hoping that this study may provide teachers and student of English for Special


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DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter gives some brief background on cognitive linguistics, its relation to
particles‟ meaning, phrasal verbs‟ meaning and introduces important concepts for the
study.
1.1. Background on Cognitive Linguistics

The third hypothesis of the cognitive linguistics approach assumes that knowledge
of language is derived from our conception of specific utterances, actual use. That is,
categories and structure in semantics, syntax, morphology and phonology are built up from
our cognition of specific utterances on specific occasion of use. Therefore, language is
both embodied and situated in a specific environment. As Croft & Cruse (2004:4) note:
“cognitive linguists argue that the detailed analysis of subtle variations in syntactic
behaivor and semantic interpretation give rise to a different model of grammatical
representation that accommodates idiosyncrasies as well as highly general patterns of
linguistics behavior.”
1.2. Background on Cognitive Semantics
As part of the field of cognitive linguistics, cognitive semantics represents an
approach to the study of mind and its relationship with embodied experience and culture. It
proceeds by employing language as a key tool for uncovering conceptual organization and
structure. As one of the original pioneers of cognitive linguistics, Leonard Talmy (2000: 4)
describes cognitive semantics as “Research on cognitive semantics is research on
conceptual content and its organization in language”.
Cognitive semantics is not a single unified framework. Different cognitive
semanticists have a diverse set of foci and interest. However, there are a number of
principles that collectively characterizes a cognitive semantics approach. According to
Talmy (2000), Lakoff & Johnson (1980), and Geerearts (1999), cognitive semantics is
characterized by four guiding principles. These principles can be stated as follows: i)
Conceptual structure is embodied; ii) Semantic structure is conceptual structure; iii)
Meaning representation is encyclopedic; iv) Meaning construction is conceptualization.
This part of the study is written to provide a preliminary overview of how these principles
are reflected in the concerns addressed by cognitive semantics.
The first guiding principle represents a fundamental concern of cognitive
semantics. It reveals the relationship between conceptual structure and the external
experience of the world. This idea holds that the nature of conceptual organization arises
utterance.
The fourth guiding principle is that language itself does not encode meaning.
Instead, as we have seen, words (and other linguistic units) are only „prompts‟ for the
construction of meaning as argued by Geeraerts, D. (1999). Accordingly, meaning is
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constructed at the conceptual level. Meaning construction is equated with
conceptualization, a process whereby linguistic units serve as prompts for an array of
conceptual operations and the recruitment of background knowledge. Meaning is a process
rather than a discrete „thing‟ that can be „packaged‟ by language.
1.2.1. Embodiment and conceptual structure
The thesis of embodiment is addressed through image schemas developed by Mark
Johnson (1987). Image schemas are relatively abstract conceptual representations that arise
directly from our everyday interaction with and observation of the world around us. That
is, they are concepts arising from embodied experience.
The conceptual structuring system approach developed by Leonard Talmy (2000)
illustrates the way in which language reflects conceptual structure which in turn reflects
embodied experience. Talmy has argued that one of the ways that language encodes
conceptual representation is by providing structural meaning, also known as schematic
meaning. This kind of meaning relates to structural properties of referents (the entities that
language describes such as objects, people and so on) and the scenes (the situation and
events that language describes). He also argues that schematic meaning is directly related
to fundamental aspects of embodied cognition, and can be divided into a number of distinct
schematic systems, each of which provides a distinct type of meaning that is closely
associated with a particular kind of embodied experience.
1.2.2. Metaphors and metonymy
Two major types of figurative usage are metaphor and metonymy. Metaphor and

Live By” (1980: 36), Lakoff and Johnson define metaphor as a conceptual process by
“which we conceive one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is
understanding.” According to this perspective, metaphor is viewed as understanding one
conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain.
Sharing the same view, a definition given by Cambridge Advanced Learner‟s
Dictionary considers metaphors as “an expression which describes a person or object in a
literary way by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics
to the person or object you are trying to describe.” Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary
writes “metaphor is a word or phrase used in an imaginative way to describe
somebody/something else, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and
to make the description more powerful.”
Obviously in all definitions metaphor is viewed as the description or conception of
one object, one action, and one process in terms of the others due to some of their similar
qualities, which can be illustrated in the following pairs of sentences.
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Pair 1:
- The dog dug up an old bone.
- We dug up some interesting facts.
Pair 2:
- Burglars had broken into their house while they were away.
- She broke into his conversation.
In each pair, the first phrasal verb has a literal meaning and refers to a physical
action, while the second is metaphorical and describes an action that is similar in some way
to the first. For example, when someone digs up information, they discover it, and the
process seems similar to the way in which dogs find bones that have been buried in the
ground.

some of its elements, to a target domain, which often follows the pattern TARGET-
DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN, or TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE DOMAIN
(1993:207). To make it clearer, an exemplary mapping of the metaphor „love is a journey‟
is provided, where the lovers represent passengers, their love is the means of transport, the
welfare of the relationship equals the destination of the journey. What is more, Lakoff
suggests that “The metaphor is not just a matter of language, but of thought and reason”.
Such metaphors and mappings of one domain onto another, as he goes on to say, are
schematic and constitute a rigid component of our comprehension and perception of certain
concepts, which explains why language users are able to make sense of various linguistic
representations of one conceptual metaphor.
A mapping (metaphorical relation) is the systematic set of correspondences that exist
between constituent elements of the source and the target domain. Many elements of target
concepts come from source domains and are not preexisting. To know a conceptual
metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing.
According to Taylor (2002:439) a domain is configuration of knowledge important
to the characterization of the meaning of a semantic unit. Moreover, as he points out,
depending on their complexity domains might be simple or basic which refer to concepts
such as colors, space and time. Those are called basic as they cannot be reduced to any
other simpler conceptions, while the complex domains include, for example, typical event
scenarios, social practices or rules of a game.
Source domain: the conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical
expressions (e.g., love is a journey). To put it another way, a source domain is a concept
that is metaphorically used to provide the means of understanding another concept.
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Target domain: the conceptual domain that we try to understand (e.g., love is a
journey).


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Trajector and Landmark are two other cognitive notions that have been used in more
recent approaches of prepositions and particles (Lindstromberg, 1997; Peña, 1998;
Rudzka-Ostyn, 2003) and they will be used in describing relational expression of the
particle in this study.
As described in Langacker (1987), Fillmore (1985), trajector (TR) is the element or
entity that is located, evaluated or described with request to another element or entity
called landmark and is the most prominent or the foregrounded element in a scene or
relational structure (conceptual domain). The trajector may be an object (The plane took
off), a person (I’m going out tonight) but also a feeling or feelings (Your real feelings are
finally getting through me), in fact, it can be any entity on which our attention focuses. It is
generally smaller, flexible and moving.
Landmark (LM) is the entity that acts or is construed as a reference point for the TR.
It is the second prominent or foregrounded participant in a profiled relationship. It usually
happens that the LM is bigger in size and it gets a relative fixity or location, as opposed to
the TR. For example, in the language of emotions, a specific emotion such as mourning in
She is in mourning acts as the LM.
1.2.5. Perspective and Construal
An important factor in some of the extended meanings of particles has to do with the
cognitive notions „perspective‟ and „construal‟. From this point of view, the most relevant
case is that of out. Huddlestone and Pullum (2002: 651) discuss the contrast between The
sun is (came) out and The light is (went) out, showing that the former sentence means that
“the sun is visible” whereas the second sentence means that “the light is invisible”. The
opposing meaning is attributable to different perspectives. The notion of perspective, one
of the dimensions of construal (Langacker, 1991) refers to the viewpoint adopted by the
conceptualizer of a referent or situation. In the two examples deictic verbs come and go do
corroborate the notion of viewpoint. Come specifies a path toward the viewer and go
specifies a path away. Sometimes it is the verb rather than the particle which mainly

more image-and/or emotion-laden than the single word.
1.3.1.1. Definitions of phrasal verbs
Tom McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992: 772)
notes that phrasal verbs are referred to by many other names such verb phrase,
discontinuous verb, compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction
(VPC), AmE two-part verb and three-part verb. David Crystal in The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the English Language calls this linguistic phenomenon a "multi-word
verb" that is best described as a lexeme, a unit of meaning that may be greater than a single
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word (1995:118). Cowie and Mackin (1993) also share a similar idea that a phrasal verb is
essentially a verb and one or two additional particles. As can be seen from the above
examples, the phrasal verb consists of a verb, usually a monosyllabic verb of action or
movement such as go, put, take, and one or more particles. The particle may be an adverb,
a preposition, or a word that can act as either adverb or preposition.
In English, verbs are often put together with adverbs as in put the book down, run
back, warm the coffee up. Verbs are often combined with prepositions, too, as come into
the hall, drop the glass on the floor. All these combinations are easy to understand because
we can work out the meaning from those of the individual verbs and adverbs or
prepositions. However, some combinations are much more difficult to understand as break
out used in the following sentence:
The crisis broke out in some European countries.
In this example, the verb „break‟ does not have the meaning it has in phrase like
break the ruler and out does not mean „outside in the open‟. The combination has to be
understood as one unit, meaning „start suddenly or violently‟. When a verb + particles
(adverb/preposition) is a unit of meaning like this, it is a phrasal verb. Sometimes, a verb,
an adverb and a preposition are combined to form one unit of meaning such as put up with,

Prepositions are highly polysemous words. The traditional view considered that all
the senses of a preposition were highly arbitrary and were not related to one another.
Consequently, both dictionaries and grammars used to provide long lists of unrelated
senses for each preposition and its possible uses in different contexts. The problem grew
even worse when it came to the study of verb-particle constructions, where the contribution
of the particle to the meaning of the whole is crucial.
The term „particle‟ (Latin particulla „small part‟) discussed by Hartmann (1999: 271)
denotes elements of uninflected word classes frequently found in languages such as
Classical Greek, German, Dutch, Norwegian, English. In late twentieth century particle
research, the term has been used with at least three meanings; first, in a very general sense,
referring to all uninflected elements as particles, second, in a narrow sense, designating
only modal and focus particles and third, considering particles as subsets of invariables
such as adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions.
It is in this third sense that the term is used in this paper. More specifically, the
researcher attaches the sense provided by Collins Cobuild English Usage (1992: XV),
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namely “a particle is an adverb or preposition such as out or up which combines with verbs
to form phrasal verbs”.
1.4. Phrasal Verbs in terms of Cognitive Semantics
A phrasal verb consists of a verb (dig, shoot, or break) and a particle (an adverb
like down or up, or a preposition like into). When the verb part of a phrasal verb is used in
a metaphorical way, this is usually quite obvious. But the particles may be used
metaphorically, too. According to the definition of phrasal verbs and the fact they are
difficult to learn, it is necessary to show that phrasal verbs are difficult to understand only
because of the meaning of the particles and foreign learners of English do not usually
notice that their meanings clearly go from the concrete to the abstract from cognitive

This is less easy to recognize, but in fact there is often a clear connection between the
literal meanings of the particle and its metaphorical uses. In English, like many other
languages, the basic, literal meanings of adverbs and prepositions refer to direction,
position in space, distance, or extent. Up literally describes movement towards a higher
position; down literally describes movement towards a lower position. The metaphorical
uses of these particles develop from these literal ones. Up has metaphorical meanings to do
with increases in size, number, or strength (prices went up); down has metaphorical
meanings to do with decreases in size, number, or strength.
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CHAPTER II: THE STUDY
In this chapter, the hypotheses will be restated in 2.1, methods of the study will be
highlighted in 2.2, the data will be described in 2.3, the framework for data analysis will be
introduced in 2.4, data analysis and discussion will be presented in 2.5.
2.1. Research Questions

some conclusions in understanding phrasal verbs in the context studied and in general
context as well.
2.3. Data
The study focuses on two sets of data from books and Internet. They are 46 up-
phrasal verbs and 42 out-phrasal verbs taken from books specialized in business, namely,
Intelligent Business (Intermediate, Upper Intermediate) by Trappe, T. & Tullis, G., Market
Leader (Pre-intermediate) by Cotton, D., Falvey, D. & Kent, S., Management and
Marketing by Mackenzie, I The data are also taken from online lessons in website,
namely, The data are chosen from the
above books for the fact that they are used in the curricula for the second and third year
Business English majors at the AOF. The website is a regular source that the author often
assigns task for students at AOF as a part of requirement for their learning. Phrasal verbs
constituted from up and out but not other particles are chosen for analysis because they are
so commonly used and have a wide range of meanings which proves to be obstacles for
learners in comprehending business texts.
2.4. Analytical Framework
The framework of analysis is based on the notions in cognitive semantics. For the
first research question, image schemas and metaphorical mappings are used to identify
major meanings of the phrasal verbs. First, the conceptual image schema for up and
schema for out proposed by Johnson (1987), Lakoff (1987), Langacker (1987) will be
employed to analyse meaning of phrasal verbs with up and out, respectively. The schemas
define the most basic meanings for the phrasal verbs from which more abstract senses are
motivated by metaphorical extensions from spatial domains onto other domains related to
human experience. Key terms for image schema framework are:
Schema: An abstract conceptualization of an experience. Here we focus on schemas
depicting a TR, LM and their relationship in both the initial configuration and the final
configuration communicated by some expression.
Trajector (TR): The object which is conceptually foregrounded. TR is the profiled or
highlighted entity. It is generally smaller, flexible and moving.