A contribuição semântica das partículas nas verb-particle constructions: um estudo sobre 'away', 'out' e 'over' através da lingüística de corpus

Abstract

Verb-Particle Constructions (VPCs) are verbal constructions typical of the English language formed by a verb and one or two particles. Such structures are syntactically and semantically complex due to the fact that they do not fit into logical and homogeneous rules. This research aims at examining the semantics of particles in VPCs within the framework of Cognitive Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics. The discussion of the semantic contribution of the particles away, out and ‘over’ is grounded in image schemas which allow establishing relations among the different meanings of particles found in the VPCs selected for the analysis. By using Corpus Linguistics tools, namely a concordancer called AntConc 3.2.1w, the five most frequent VPCs with each particle in the American National Corpus were selected for the analysis. The results showed that the particles contribute to the overall meaning of VPCs in different degrees, with more and less metaphorical senses