The compositionality of English phrasal verbs in terms of imageability

• Autores: Seth Lindstromberg
• Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 275, 2022
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • There has been considerable discussion about the degree to which English phrasal verbs (PVs) tend to be semantically “compositional” or “non-idiomatic” versus “non-compositional” or “idiomatic”. Much of this discussion relates to evidence that many learners of English as an additional language (L2) find PVs particularly difficult to acquire. This article reports a novel empirical study of the compositionality of PVs which makes use of published and newly collected subjective ratings of lexeme “imageability” (i.e., the extent to which a lexeme evokes mental imagery). The premise is that a PV cannot be wholly compositional if its imageability differs greatly from the imageability of its constituent words (CWs). The study focuses on 150 frequent PVs. Key data are meaning-specific imageability ratings of these PVs and their CWs. Results of multiple linear regression analysis indicate that for native-speakers about 13% of PV imageability is attributable to CW imageability. Literality, measured by two kinds of ratings, emerged as a much stronger predictor. These results suggest that any psychologically real PV compositionality in terms of imageability tends to be weakly accessible to native-speakers engaged in off-line reflection. The results suggest lines of enquiry with respect to treatment of PVs in contexts of instructed L2 acquisition.