Metaphorical Extensions of the particle down in verb combinations

Abstract

Metaphor is more a mechanism of conceiving the world than merely a rhetorical device. Studies of metaphor have been entirely renewed since 1980s and evinced by Lakoff and Johnsons (1980) book, named Metaphors We Live by, which has transformed the basis studies of metaphor in the linguistic field. They interpreted the metaphor system, which is now known as modern metaphor, under a cognitive perspective and proposed that metaphor is a matter of thought and action. From this view, it is possible to analyze several language constructions, such as verb combinations, which, in turn, possess sundry aspects of composition and meaning. Thus, considering the meanings from the semantic and the metaphorical conceptions, and relying mainly on the studies performed by Lakoff (1987), Grady (1997), Lakoff and Johnson (2003 [1980]), Rudzka-Ostyn (2003) and Pierozan (2016), this study aimed at analyzing the issue of the phenomenon: verb combinations with down from a cognitive perspective. Hence, it was expected to examine and describe the metaphorical usages of the verb combinations encountered in order to check their core features, and to expand the knowledge in the linguistic field. As ways to guide the study, the following questions were proposed: Where do the meanings of the top five verb combinations with down on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) stem from? What are the metaphorical extensions perceived in the five most frequent verb combinations found? Furthermore, the data collected from the corpus was analyzed in a qualitative manner, and they were empirically used in the analysis of the metaphorical extensions of down according to the five senses posed by Rudzka-Ostyn (2003). Finally, it is possible to argue that the senses and schemas underlying the particle and the verbs seem to play a decisive role in meaning formation, and that metaphor is what bridges the conceptual transference from the concrete domain to the abstract domain. Besides, it was also able to conclude that the metaphorical, or extended, senses are more recurrent in language in use.