Verb-particle constructions are one of the most complex components of the English language. Understanding and producing such difficult constructs in a second language (L2) is a challenge for L2 learners of English. This research was based on the study by Blais and Gonnerman (2013). The purpose of the current study was to measure American and Saudi participants' sensitivity to the degree of semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle constructions. The survey of similarity ratings was administered to 107 American native English speakers and 67 Saudi English learners. The participants were asked to rate 78 items based on their knowledge of the semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle pairs. Results revealed two major findings; American native speakers and Saudi English learners did not behave consistently with the similarity rating task, and the results did not support the previous categorizations of 78 items that established by Blais and Gonnerman. Extrapolating from these findings, it appears that similarity judgments of verb/verb-particle pairs may be sample-specific, even among native speakers. Therefore, it is questionable whether Blais and Gonnerman's instrument can be used to reliably compare the judgments of different samples of native and non-native speakers.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:11:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 23 / Nenhuma / As Verb-Particle Constructions (VPCs) são construções verbais características da língua inglesa constituídas por um verbo e uma ou duas partículas. Tais estruturas são sintática e semanticamente complexas, uma vez que não se enquadram em regras lógicas e homogêneas. Esta pesquisa visa fazer uma reflexão sobre a semântica das partículas nas VPCs apoiada em conceitos teóricos da Gramática Cognitiva e da Lingüística Cognitiva. A contribuição semântica das partículas away, out e over é discutida valendo-se de esquemas imagéticos que permitem fazer relações entre os diferentes significados das partículas encontrados nas VPCs selecionadas para a análise. Através das ferramentas da Lingüística de Corpus, mais especificamente um concordanciador gratuito chamado AntConc 3.2.1w, foram selecionadas para a análise as cinco VPCs mais freqüentes do American National Corpus com cada partícula. Como resultado, percebeu-se que as partículas contribuem em diferentes graus para o significado total das VPCs, podendo apresentar s / Verb-Particle Constructions (VPCs) are verbal constructions typical of the English language formed by a verb and one or two particles. Such structures are syntactically and semantically complex due to the fact that they do not fit into logical and homogeneous rules. This research aims at examining the semantics of particles in VPCs within the framework of Cognitive Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics. The discussion of the semantic contribution of the particles away, out and ‘over’ is grounded in image schemas which allow establishing relations among the different meanings of particles found in the VPCs selected for the analysis. By using Corpus Linguistics tools, namely a concordancer called AntConc 3.2.1w, the five most frequent VPCs with each particle in the American National Corpus were selected for the analysis. The results showed that the particles contribute to the overall meaning of VPCs in different degrees, with more and less metaphorical senses