English phrasal verbs in the domain of healthcare/medicine: A cognitive semantic analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/analiff.2025.37.2.4Abstract
Cognitive entrenchment of lexical units such as phrasal verbs is one of the central issues in cognitive linguistics, as it highlights the fact that their meaning is not arbitrary, but systematically motivated. However, the semantic motivation of English healthcare/medicine-related phrasal verbs has received limited attention. Understanding their conceptual nature is essential for broader insights into the complex interplay between language and cognition. The main aim of this study is to ascertain the cognitive salience of English phrasal verbs in the domain of healthcare/medicine. Specifically, it seeks to determine the underlying image-schematic structure of the observed phrasal verbs and examine the conceptual mappings responsible for their further meaning extension. The study involves a total of 105 healthcare/medicine-related phrasal verbs containing 18 different particles with 109 different senses. Data were collected through an authoritative phrasal verb dictionary and complemented by the language material taken from two representative electronic corpora of the English language. The linguistic evidence was analysed using a qualitative cognitive-semantic analysis to identify the phrasal verbs’ cognitive entrenchment. The analysis revealed that both constituent components making up a phrasal verb contribute to the overall meaning of the researched phrasal verbs. In all the observed phrasal verbs, two different types of meanings were ascertained and analysed. These are (1) the general meaning (stemming from the image-schematic structure of the particle) and (2) the specific meaning (construed via conceptual metaphors and metonymies entrenched in the base verb). The results suggest that the meaning of the phrasal verbs under exploration is cognitively salient to a high degree. They contribute to the understanding of phrasal verbs by highlighting the cognitive mechanisms that motivate the meaning of these linguistic units. The findings have implications for future semantic analyses of the same or similar lexical items (e.g. phrasal verbs belonging to other domains or prefixed verbs).
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