Abstract Most usage-based research emphasizes the importance of implicit, input-driven learning in naturalistic environments, but recent studies have adopted usage-based grammatical descriptions for instructed learning in classrooms. These descriptions are intended to draw learners’ deliberate attention to relevant usage patterns in the input and thereby support intake. Most of these studies compare usage-based descriptions to other types of descriptions for their efficiency, while little attention has been paid to the ways in which learners understand and apply such descriptions. This study examines what foreign language learners understand of usage-based grammatical descriptions of target structures. In an experimental forced choice task, Chinese learners of German received usage-based descriptions of case structures and then classified target instances in variable contexts. A multivariate regression analysis indicated that choices were influenced by interactions of the type of description with participants’ target-language proficiency and the semantic and lexical target contexts. This is discussed in terms of noticing and category formation. This study argues that learners are able to use grammatical descriptions as some kind of auxiliary model for recognizing and categorizing target patterns. The descriptions thus make learners aware of the mechanisms underlying implicit learning and help them exploit these mechanisms for explicit learning.
{"title":"What foreign language learners make of grammatical descriptions depends on description type, proficiency, and context","authors":"Daniel Jach","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00149.jac","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00149.jac","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Most usage-based research emphasizes the importance of implicit, input-driven learning in naturalistic environments, but recent studies have adopted usage-based grammatical descriptions for instructed learning in classrooms. These descriptions are intended to draw learners’ deliberate attention to relevant usage patterns in the input and thereby support intake. Most of these studies compare usage-based descriptions to other types of descriptions for their efficiency, while little attention has been paid to the ways in which learners understand and apply such descriptions. This study examines what foreign language learners understand of usage-based grammatical descriptions of target structures. In an experimental forced choice task, Chinese learners of German received usage-based descriptions of case structures and then classified target instances in variable contexts. A multivariate regression analysis indicated that choices were influenced by interactions of the type of description with participants’ target-language proficiency and the semantic and lexical target contexts. This is discussed in terms of noticing and category formation. This study argues that learners are able to use grammatical descriptions as some kind of auxiliary model for recognizing and categorizing target patterns. The descriptions thus make learners aware of the mechanisms underlying implicit learning and help them exploit these mechanisms for explicit learning.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135641879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The process of noun-verb conversion, which is highly productive in English, has been dealt with from a variety of theoretical perspectives. What is missing so far is a systematic analysis of conceptual-semantic factors which motivate this process and set it apart from another productive verb-formation process, namely - ize derivation. The present article is intended to fill this gap. While some conceptual-semantic patterns which are displayed by converted verbs but not by - ize verbs have already been identified in the literature, more fine-grained contrastive analyses show that converted verbs display even more patterns not attested for the overtly derived verbs. Even if the two verb-formation types share a conceptual-semantic pattern, they may be in complementary distribution at a lower level of abstraction. Moreover, non-derived denominal verbs allow for a wider range of metaphorical meanings. The difference in semantic diversity is ascribed here to the fact that - ize verbs denote more specialized activities, whereas converted verbs typically (though not necessarily) express activities reflecting speakers’ interaction with basic-level objects, which may be based on experience or imagination. Since the activities denoted by converted verbs are readily transferred to different domains of experience (e.g., to bottle up emotions ), these verbs more frequently undergo metaphorical meaning extension. Formally, the higher degree of semantic versatility observed for converted verbs is reflected by the fact that conversion – unlike - ize derivation – is constrained neither by predetermined Lexical Conceptual Structures nor by selectional restrictions, but motivated by metonymy, which may be enriched by metaphorical extension.
{"title":"The competition between noun-verb conversion and -<i>ize</i> derivation","authors":"Heike Baeskow","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00155.bae","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00155.bae","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The process of noun-verb conversion, which is highly productive in English, has been dealt with from a variety of theoretical perspectives. What is missing so far is a systematic analysis of conceptual-semantic factors which motivate this process and set it apart from another productive verb-formation process, namely - ize derivation. The present article is intended to fill this gap. While some conceptual-semantic patterns which are displayed by converted verbs but not by - ize verbs have already been identified in the literature, more fine-grained contrastive analyses show that converted verbs display even more patterns not attested for the overtly derived verbs. Even if the two verb-formation types share a conceptual-semantic pattern, they may be in complementary distribution at a lower level of abstraction. Moreover, non-derived denominal verbs allow for a wider range of metaphorical meanings. The difference in semantic diversity is ascribed here to the fact that - ize verbs denote more specialized activities, whereas converted verbs typically (though not necessarily) express activities reflecting speakers’ interaction with basic-level objects, which may be based on experience or imagination. Since the activities denoted by converted verbs are readily transferred to different domains of experience (e.g., to bottle up emotions ), these verbs more frequently undergo metaphorical meaning extension. Formally, the higher degree of semantic versatility observed for converted verbs is reflected by the fact that conversion – unlike - ize derivation – is constrained neither by predetermined Lexical Conceptual Structures nor by selectional restrictions, but motivated by metonymy, which may be enriched by metaphorical extension.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135643171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While it has largely been taken for granted by most linguists that the relationship between linguistic signifier and signified is arbitrary in nature, a growing number of studies suggest otherwise. In this article, we demonstrate that iconicity in total reduplicative constructions in Nigerian Pidgin is graded in nature, and that the degree of iconicity of any given reduplicative is largely correlated with the word class to which its simplex form belongs, with reduplicated ideophones and adverbials exhibiting the highest degree of iconicity, reduplicated pronouns the lowest degree of iconicity, and reduplicated adjectives, nouns, numerals and verbs intermediate degrees of iconicity. Our results shed light, not only on which word classes are more prototypically involved in reduplication than others in the world’s languages, but also on typical pathways that reduplicatives follow in processes of grammaticalization, whereby their isomorphic form-meaning relationship appears increasingly attenuated, albeit due to varying language-internal factors that are specific to individual languages.
{"title":"Gradience in iconicity","authors":"Nancy Chiagolum Odiegwu, Jesús Romero-Trillo","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00150.odi","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00150.odi","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While it has largely been taken for granted by most linguists that the relationship between linguistic signifier\u0000 and signified is arbitrary in nature, a growing number of studies suggest otherwise. In this article, we demonstrate that\u0000 iconicity in total reduplicative constructions in Nigerian Pidgin is graded in nature, and that the degree of iconicity of any\u0000 given reduplicative is largely correlated with the word class to which its simplex form belongs, with reduplicated ideophones and\u0000 adverbials exhibiting the highest degree of iconicity, reduplicated pronouns the lowest degree of iconicity, and reduplicated\u0000 adjectives, nouns, numerals and verbs intermediate degrees of iconicity.\u0000 Our results shed light, not only on which word classes are more prototypically involved in reduplication than\u0000 others in the world’s languages, but also on typical pathways that reduplicatives follow in processes of grammaticalization,\u0000 whereby their isomorphic form-meaning relationship appears increasingly attenuated, albeit due to varying language-internal\u0000 factors that are specific to individual languages.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44580491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Verbal synesthesia is generally considered to be a special type of metaphor involving concepts stemming from distinct sensory domains. However, with the upsurge of metonymy research some authors have proposed a metonymic motivation for synesthetic expressions. In line with these proposals, I argue in my paper that (i) a considerable portion of synesthetic expressions are in fact metonymic and (ii) they are based either on co-occurrence or on an intra-modal resemblance of sensory stimuli. Since olfaction offers itself as an ideal terrain to study synaesthetic expressions due to its relatively poor lexicalization in most languages, in order to test my hypotheses, I present the results of a corpus study on German synesthetic attribute-noun constructions combining gustatory adjectives with olfactory nouns. My results suggest that the heterogeneity of verbal synesthesia regarding its conceptual background cannot be grasped simply by proposing that it is a metaphorical phenomenon.
{"title":"A case for metonymic synesthesia","authors":"M. Tóth","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00151.tot","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00151.tot","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Verbal synesthesia is generally considered to be a special type of metaphor involving concepts stemming from distinct sensory domains. However, with the upsurge of metonymy research some authors have proposed a metonymic motivation for synesthetic expressions. In line with these proposals, I argue in my paper that (i) a considerable portion of synesthetic expressions are in fact metonymic and (ii) they are based either on co-occurrence or on an intra-modal resemblance of sensory stimuli. Since olfaction offers itself as an ideal terrain to study synaesthetic expressions due to its relatively poor lexicalization in most languages, in order to test my hypotheses, I present the results of a corpus study on German synesthetic attribute-noun constructions combining gustatory adjectives with olfactory nouns. My results suggest that the heterogeneity of verbal synesthesia regarding its conceptual background cannot be grasped simply by proposing that it is a metaphorical phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45815598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Cognitive Linguistics, the noun-participle compound is a grammatical category with instances of different degrees of membership. The purpose of this study is to explore the categorization processes and schematic networks in noun-participle compounding. Working with the data of noun-participle compounds from COHA, we identified three types of participles: deverbal, denominal and ambicategorical. Two schemas [Nj-Vk-ed]A and [Nj-Nk-ed]A are established as generalizations of compounds of deverbal (e.g. man-made) and denominal participles (e.g. life-sized). Compounds of ambicategorical participles (e.g. snow-covered), are sanctioned by two schemas simultaneously, which give rise to ambiguous morphological readings. This study confirms the labor division between mother-daughter links and sister links in a schema network. The higher-level generalization is encoded by paradigmatically-related sister schemas, with the sister relations built on the shared structure links and a bi-directional conversion of the stem of ppl (i.e., noun-to-verb or verb-to-noun). The sister schemas as a paradigm is a more parsimonious generalization of the compounds, than the posited mother schema.
{"title":"Paradigms as second-order schemas in English noun-participle compounding","authors":"Hongwei Zhan, Sihong Huang, Lei Sun","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00147.zha","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00147.zha","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In Cognitive Linguistics, the noun-participle compound is a grammatical category with instances of different degrees of membership. The purpose of this study is to explore the categorization processes and schematic networks in noun-participle compounding. Working with the data of noun-participle compounds from COHA, we identified three types of participles: deverbal, denominal and ambicategorical. Two schemas [Nj-Vk-ed]A and [Nj-Nk-ed]A are established as generalizations of compounds of deverbal (e.g. man-made) and denominal participles (e.g. life-sized). Compounds of ambicategorical participles (e.g. snow-covered), are sanctioned by two schemas simultaneously, which give rise to ambiguous morphological readings. This study confirms the labor division between mother-daughter links and sister links in a schema network. The higher-level generalization is encoded by paradigmatically-related sister schemas, with the sister relations built on the shared structure links and a bi-directional conversion of the stem of ppl (i.e., noun-to-verb or verb-to-noun). The sister schemas as a paradigm is a more parsimonious generalization of the compounds, than the posited mother schema.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43807417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers theoretical and programmatic reflection on how the impact of culture on language change should be accounted for from a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammatical perspective, with a focus on how cultural change can cause constructions to disappear from a language. It approaches this question through an assessment of how culture is incorporated in Schmid’s (2020) Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model of ‘the dynamics of the linguistic system’. Against the backdrop of various proposals on the effect of ‘democratization’ in Anglo-Saxon culture on subtractive historical developments in the modal domain of English, and based on a study of interpersonal variation in the intrapersonal longitudinal development of a declining modal construction, the paper argues that the influence of culture on language change is mediated by entrenchment and that culture has a more extensive impact on entrenchment than the EC-model currently allows for.
{"title":"Culture in a radically usage-based model of language change, with special reference to constructional attrition","authors":"D. Noël","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00152.noe","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00152.noe","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article offers theoretical and programmatic reflection on how the impact of culture on language change should be accounted for from a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammatical perspective, with a focus on how cultural change can cause constructions to disappear from a language. It approaches this question through an assessment of how culture is incorporated in Schmid’s (2020) Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model of ‘the dynamics of the linguistic system’. Against the backdrop of various proposals on the effect of ‘democratization’ in Anglo-Saxon culture on subtractive historical developments in the modal domain of English, and based on a study of interpersonal variation in the intrapersonal longitudinal development of a declining modal construction, the paper argues that the influence of culture on language change is mediated by entrenchment and that culture has a more extensive impact on entrenchment than the EC-model currently allows for.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42082148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Peréz Sobrino & Littlemore Ford (2021): Unpacking creativity. The power of figurative communication in advertising","authors":"J. Pelclová","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00154.pel","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00154.pel","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44938237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper aims to investigate the meanings of Chinese neng (modal verb) bu (negative word) neng (modal verb) + VP construction and explores the meaning motivations behind them. The present paper employs the method of collostructional analysis, R software and BLCU Corpus Center1 (BCC) are used to process the linguistic data. It is found that the prototypical meaning of the target construction is “let something (not) happen or let someone (not) do something” with the sense of negotiation and interaction and its extensional meanings include “getting an expected result”, “continuation”, “obtaining”, “specific actions containing causation, motion, communication, vision, life, and mental activities”. The meaning motivations of the construction lie in the force experience of human from his/her interaction with the outside world, and in the semantic interaction of its constituent words neng and bu.
{"title":"Collostructional analysis on Chinese modal verb construction neng bu neng + VP","authors":"Weijia Shan, Zhengjun Lin","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00142.sha","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00142.sha","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper aims to investigate the meanings of Chinese neng (modal verb) bu\u0000 (negative word) neng (modal verb) + VP construction and explores the meaning motivations behind them. The present\u0000 paper employs the method of collostructional analysis, R software and BLCU Corpus Center1\u0000 (BCC) are used to process the linguistic data. It is found that the prototypical meaning of the target construction is “let\u0000 something (not) happen or let someone (not) do something” with the sense of negotiation and interaction and its extensional\u0000 meanings include “getting an expected result”, “continuation”, “obtaining”, “specific actions containing causation, motion,\u0000 communication, vision, life, and mental activities”. The meaning motivations of the construction lie in the force experience of\u0000 human from his/her interaction with the outside world, and in the semantic interaction of its constituent words\u0000 neng and bu.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47973038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present study aims to investigate the semantic value of the German spatial preposition jenseits (‘beyond’). It is argued that our conceptualization of the spatial-physical world and how we interact with objects in our environment transforms a prepositions’ primary meaning into domains of meaning that are tied to time or social interactions. While the study of the semantic structure of English prepositions has received attention, German prepositions, particularly less frequently used ones such as hinter (‘behind’) or jenseits, present a gap in research. It is attempted to show that the different senses of jenseits form a semantic network in which meaning extensions of the spatial, primary sense of jenseits are motivated by varying construal patterns imposed upon an observed scene. The description of the semantic structure of jenseits also draws on previous studies on its English counterpart, beyond (Boers, 1996; Lindstromberg, 2010). Based on the sample collected for the purpose of this study, this paper analyzes 1000 occurrences of the preposition jenseits in the DWDS-subcorpus Die Zeit. The analysis shows that a high frequency of the occurrences found in the sample constitute non-spatial meanings of jenseits and thus encode a configuration between objects in more abstract domains. Furthermore, the notion of metaphorical mapping is used to explain the conceptualization and metaphorical transfer of spatial jenseits to abstract domains of human experience.
{"title":"The semantic mapping of the German spatial preposition JENSEITS","authors":"Franka Kermer","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00146.ker","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00146.ker","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The present study aims to investigate the semantic value of the German spatial preposition jenseits (‘beyond’). It is argued that our conceptualization of the spatial-physical world and how we interact with objects in our environment transforms a prepositions’ primary meaning into domains of meaning that are tied to time or social interactions. While the study of the semantic structure of English prepositions has received attention, German prepositions, particularly less frequently used ones such as hinter (‘behind’) or jenseits, present a gap in research. It is attempted to show that the different senses of jenseits form a semantic network in which meaning extensions of the spatial, primary sense of jenseits are motivated by varying construal patterns imposed upon an observed scene. The description of the semantic structure of jenseits also draws on previous studies on its English counterpart, beyond (Boers, 1996; Lindstromberg, 2010). Based on the sample collected for the purpose of this study, this paper analyzes 1000 occurrences of the preposition jenseits in the DWDS-subcorpus Die Zeit. The analysis shows that a high frequency of the occurrences found in the sample constitute non-spatial meanings of jenseits and thus encode a configuration between objects in more abstract domains. Furthermore, the notion of metaphorical mapping is used to explain the conceptualization and metaphorical transfer of spatial jenseits to abstract domains of human experience.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43575355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present study examines two cognitive linguistics approaches to foreign language teaching. One draws on the conventionality of language use that a variety of expressions can be understood as instances of more general patterns, e.g., kick them out and eat it up as verb-object-particle, whereas the other centers on linguistic creativeness such as novel combinations or associations, e.g., chest down the ball. Noting that English verb-particle constructions (VPCs) exemplify both linguistic conventionality and creativeness, two types of instruction have been developed–namely, top-down instruction and bottom-up instruction. The top-down instruction presents VPCs as instances of conventional argument structures such as motion and resultative constructions (Goldberg, 2015), whereas the bottom-up instruction focuses on creative compositions of literal and metaphorical meanings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The two types of instruction were provided for Korean EFL learners, and their knowledge of VPCs was measured by a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a four-week delayed posttest. Results of the immediate posttest showed that both types of instruction were effective in improving the learners’ knowledge of literal and figurative VPCs. In the delayed posttest, significantly greater retention was observed for the construction-based top-down instruction. This finding highlights the importance of argument structures as super-constructions in teaching VPCs to EFL learners.
{"title":"Top-down and bottom-up approaches to teaching English verb-particle constructions","authors":"Min-Chang Sung","doi":"10.1075/rcl.00145.sun","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00145.sun","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The present study examines two cognitive linguistics approaches to foreign language teaching. One draws on the\u0000 conventionality of language use that a variety of expressions can be understood as instances of more general patterns, e.g.,\u0000 kick them out and eat it up as verb-object-particle, whereas the other centers on linguistic\u0000 creativeness such as novel combinations or associations, e.g., chest down the ball. Noting that English\u0000 verb-particle constructions (VPCs) exemplify both linguistic conventionality and creativeness, two types of instruction have been\u0000 developed–namely, top-down instruction and bottom-up instruction. The top-down instruction presents VPCs as instances of\u0000 conventional argument structures such as motion and resultative constructions (Goldberg,\u0000 2015), whereas the bottom-up instruction focuses on creative compositions of literal and metaphorical meanings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The two types of instruction were provided for Korean EFL\u0000 learners, and their knowledge of VPCs was measured by a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a four-week delayed posttest. Results\u0000 of the immediate posttest showed that both types of instruction were effective in improving the learners’ knowledge of literal and\u0000 figurative VPCs. In the delayed posttest, significantly greater retention was observed for the construction-based top-down\u0000 instruction. This finding highlights the importance of argument structures as super-constructions in teaching VPCs to EFL\u0000 learners.","PeriodicalId":51932,"journal":{"name":"Review of Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43827837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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