The Dual Nature of Directional Particles in Academic Phrasal Verbs: A Constructionist Corpus Analysis of 'Out', 'Up', and 'Down' in the BAWE Corpus

Abstract This study employs Construction Grammar and cognitive linguistic frameworks to investigate the dual semantic functions of directional adverbial particles ('out', 'up', 'down') within phrasal verbs in the context of English academic writing. Utilizing Corpus Query Language (CQL) within Sketch Engine, a total of 9,866 instances of phrasal verbs from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus were analyzed. The results demonstrate that 78.25% of these usages are idiomatic, with significant variation observed across different genres (χ² = 892.4, p < .001). Notably, 'out' exhibits an idiomatic usage rate of 98.4%, whereas "down' remains predominantly compositional at 63.2%. It is recommended that corpus-based examples, contextual learning, and genre-specific instruction be utilized to facilitate the acquisition of phrasal verbs. The findings substantiate the notion that targeted instruction of phrasal verbs can enhance the academic writing skills of learners of English as a second language. This research integrates corpus linguistics with Construction Grammar (Goldberg, 2006) and cognitive semantics (Lakoff, 1987) to explore directional particles as schematic constructions. Within this framework, literal usages preserve their spatial semantics, whereas idiomatic extensions exemplify metaphorical mappings.