A Corpus-based Behavioral Profile Study Of English Hitting Verbs:Hit,Beat,Strike

As a complex semantic phenomenon,synonymy has been widely concerned in the field of linguistics.The early research on synonyms based on introspection was mainly to distinguish and analyze synonyms according to their semantic features.In recent years,with the empirical turn of cognitive linguistics,the corpus-based behavioral profile analysis,as a quantitative research method,has provided another way for the study of synonymy.In view of this,this thesis uses a corpus-based behavioral profile analysis to examine the similarities and differences in internal semantic structures and usage patterns of three English hitting verbs hit,beat,and strike.The three questions are answered:(1)As polysemous words,what are the similarities and differences among hit,beat and strike in their semantic extension paths?(2)When indicating the hitting action,what are the similarities and differences among hit,beat and strike in their usage patterns?(3)What are the cognitive motivations underlying the similarities and differences of three verbs? Initially,I download all the instances of hit,beat,and strike from the BNCweb(CQP edition)in modern English and extracts 2000 instances using Conc Sampler in order to solve the aforementioned three research questions.Subsequently,after excluding non-verb corpus data,a total of 1,462 instances of hit,1,554 instances of beat,and 1,310 instances of strike were obtained.Then the corpus data are manually annotated following the identification of their senses and behavioral features.Finally,hierarchical cluster analysis and correspondence analysis are used to reveal the internal semantic structure of the three verbs when used to express the hitting action,as well as the polysemous semantic network of them.These are the findings of this thesis:Firstly,the results of cluster analysis indicate that the maximum number of target domains for strike is ten,the number of target domains for beat is six,and the number of target domains for hit is just five.Through contrastive analysis,this thesis finds that there are similarities and differences in the semantic extension pathways of the three verbs.Based on conceptual metaphors,the three verbs can be extended from the ACTION domain to the conceptual domains of WAR,RESULT,JOURNEY.In contrast,their semantic extensions are different.Both hit and strike,through the conceptual metaphor,extend their meanings to the domains of THOUGHT in order to describe changes in the thinking processes of individuals,whereas beat does not.Using conceptual metaphors,strike can also expand its senses to target domains like EMOTION,STATE,JOB,PRODUCTION,and ATTITUDE.Then,in the ACTION domain,both hit and strike can be extended from the hitting ACTION domain to the CONTACT domain via metonymy,whereas the senses of beat can be extended to the BLENDING and PROCESS domains via conceptual metonymy.In conclusion,the similarities in the semantic extensions among the three hit-verbs are due to the universality of the way the human brain processes information.Following that,abstract concepts are typically comprehended through specific action concepts derived from embodied experiences,which is in accordance with our mental processing patterns and general processing principles.However,the differences in the semantic extensions among the three verbs should be attributed to the variety of metaphors and the prominent principle of metonymy,linguistic variability and sociocultural tendencies.Secondly,results of cluster analysis and correspondence analysis indicate that when expressing hitting actions,the usage features of hit and beat are quite similar,whereas the usage properties of strike are considerably distinct from them.In specific,all the three verbs can co-occur with usage features of Declarative and Concrete nouns,etc.However,the distinctions in usage among the three verbs are mostly represented in their argument categories and adverbial modifiers.When expressing the meaning of hitting actions in terms of subject categories,the subjects of hit and beat are primarily natural substances,whereas the subjects of strike tend to be nouns of people,body parts,animals and plants,and balls.Moreover,in terms of object categories,hit and beat are typically employed with nouns of people,natural objects,animals,and plants,but the nominal objects of strike are primarily body parts and balls.In terms of instrument categories,the instruments of hit and beat tend to be nouns of balls and weapons,but strike is usually used with nouns of body parts.Besides,the differences among the three verbs are also reflected in their adverbial modifiers.For example,hit and beat are typically modified by adverbs of manner to emphasize the way in which the hitting action happens,whereas strike is typically modified by adverbs of frequency to emphasize the repetition and regularity of the hitting actions.Thirdly,one reason why the usage patterns of the three verbs hit,beat,and strike are similar is that they share the general properties of hit-verbs and the same way of construal.In particular,the co-occurrence characteristics of the three verbs mirror the basic traits of hit-verbs.Meanwhile,the usages of hit and beat have more similarities in their usage patterns,and the commonality of their arguments and adverb modifiers are reflected in the dimensions of prominence,perspective,and dynamicity.For instance,when the subject is nouns referring to natural substances,both hit and beat tend to express the highest degree of subjectivity in speech activities.However,the differences among the three verbs in usage features are mostly due to the dimensions of prominence and dynamicity.Specifically,both hit and beat can be modified by adverbs of manner to emphasize how hitting actions are carried out.While strike is typically modified by adverbs of frequency to emphasize the repetition of hitting actions.Finally,in terms of the dimension of dynamicity,strike tends to scan from far to close in space,whereas hit and beat tend to scan from top to bottom.Taking three hit-verbs hit,beat,strike as an example,this thesis applies the corpus-based behavioral profile analysis to investigate the usage patterns and semantic distributions of this set of synonyms.This thesis also clears the similarities and differences of this group of synonymous verbs.It helps English learners to use this group of synonyms correctly,and provides a useful reference for Chinese-English translation,the compilation of synonymous dictionaries,and the teaching of English vocabulary.