A Cognitive Study Of The Meanings Of Look Verbs

The visual perception is in the majority of ordinary perception.Hence a very large corresponding vocabulary generally exists in natural language used in people’s daily life.This thesis takes look verbs in English as the research objects.Based on the ground of incomplete statistical information,there are more than 40-verbs that are characterized with different manners,causes,moods,time,purposes and grounds of visual motion event,such as sightsee,peep,observe and so forth.However,the nuances in the meaning of look verbs enhance the difficulty for English leaners in mastering the deep semantic knowledge of these words.Meanwhile,the previous studies of vision verbs mainly focus on the differences of lexicalization and grammaticalization between Chinese and English,and few studies have made in-depth exploration of how to construct the internal relations of vision verbs in English.The semantic feature analysis of look verbs in English,it can.not only enrich the research ideas and methods of subcategorization and meaning construction in theory,but also help greatly in precise vocabulary selection and application,etc..Moreover,it can have influence on English teaching practice and computer language.This thesis manages to answer three research questions:(1)How can the look verbs be subcategorized?(2)What are the semantic features of the look verbs?(3)What is the semantic network of the look verbs?This thesis selects 41 look verbs from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English,Collins Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary,and Oxford Advanced Learner ’s English-Chinese Dictionary on the following standards:(1)There must be at least one definition clearly depicting looking action,or using eyes.(2)The look verbs must have at least one of semantic elements.(3)The meaning of verbs or verb phrases describing or indicating look actions in some sentences or contexts but not found in the dictionaries mentioned above,are not look verbs.Based on Talmy’s cognitive semantic elements(2000),this thesis figures out subcategorizations of look verbs,and analyzes the semantic features of them accordingly.Then it studies the semantic structures of each subcategory of the look verbs,and constructs their semantic networks,which can help English learners(including computers)to distinguish and grasp the meanings of look verbs,so as to deepen their understanding and use of these verbs.This thesis has the following major findings:(1)It presents a manifest series of the semantic features of look verbs.(2)Visual motion events can be divided into long and short processes with different manners,and different results.The distinctive features of manners,causes,moods,time,purposes and grounds distinguish look verbs from one another.(3)The connection of the look verbs,which is related to visual perception in English,is clearly reflected in the semantic network.