Image Schemas in Verb–Particle Constructions: Evidence from a Behavioral Experiment

Cognitive linguists claim that verb–particle constructions are compositional and analyzable, and that the particles contribute to the overall meaning in the form of image schemas. This article examined this claim with a behavioral experiment, in which participants were asked to judge the sensibility of short sentences primed by image-schematic pictures. Results showed that for sentences containing spatial VP constructions, the latency followed the order of “agreement primes < neutral primes < disagreement primes”, while for sentences of non-spatial VP constructions, the order was “neutral primes < agreement primes < disagreement primes”. This suggests that the activation of the corresponding image schemas influences both types of VP constructions, providing new evidence for the embodied account of language and thought. The different processing patterns between the spatial and non-spatial VP constructions are also discussed in the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar.