For及其短语动词的认知语义研究

The Cognitive Meaning of "for" and its Phrasal Verbs

介词和短语动词是英语学习的重点和难点之一,但是结构主义和转换生成主义等传统的语言学对此缺乏解释力,学生只能死记硬背,费时低效。认知语言学界对现存意义中含有空间方位概念的介词及其短语动词进行了研究,而现存意义中不含空间方位概念的介词及短语动词仍然得不到合理的解释。文章运用隐喻、意象图式和概念合成等理论对介词for以及由for构成的短语动词进行了认知语义研究。研究发现:尽管介词for表示前后方位概念的意义已经被front和before所代替,但其意义延伸仍然是以其基本空间意义即表示前后的意义为基础的;其演变的意象图式为包含"始源——路径——目的地"的运动图式,for的现行意义基本上都是基于这一图式通过隐喻和转喻延伸而产生;而for短语动词则是由动词的意义与for的各种现行意义进行匹配合成而来。

Prepositions and their phrasal verbs are important and difficult parts of English learning. Because the traditional schools of linguistics as structuralism and transformational-generativism are inadequate to explain them, students have to learn by rote and it is time-consuming and inefficient. The cognitive linguistic field has conducted researches on the prepositions and their phrasal verbs whose current meanings contain spatial concepts while those without spatial concepts still remain unsolved. This paper, by applying theories of metaphor, image-schema and conceptual blending, explores the basic cognitive meaning of ＂for＂ and its verbal phrases. The research has the following findings： the meaning extension of this word is based on the basic spatial meaning, namely, ＂in front of＂, although the basic front-back spatial meaning has been substituted by ＂front＂ and ＂before＂; its extended image schema is a force schema with ＂source-path-destination＂, from which the existing meanings have evolved by metaphorical extension; and the meaning of the verbal phrases with ＂for＂ comes from the matching and blending of the meanings from both the verbs and ＂for＂.