Aiming with → arrows ← at particles: Towards a conceptual analysis of directional meaning components in German particle verbs

This article presents a case study on the contributions of prepositional particles to the meanings of German particle verbs (such as anstrahlen ‘to beam/smile at’ and aufgeben ‘to give up’). Based on a set of 16 “concept images”, two-dimensional directional arrow pictographs, 60 experiment participants selected one or more concept images for a systematically composed set of 270 German particle verbs and their 30 base verbs. We formulate a series of hypotheses for the meanings of nine constituent particle types (ab, an, auf, aus, ein, mit, nach, vor, zu) and investi- gate them in the light of the concept image selections. Qualitative and quantitative analyses indicate that our hypotheses are largely confirmed, across three source domains varying in their abstractness (Machines & Tools, Force, Sound), as well as across well-known vs. unknown particle verbs. The particles exhibit individual concept image profiles, and they vary in their flexibility to provide predominant di- rections; for example, while auf is rather consistently perceived as contributing an upward/right direction to a particle verb meaning, an shows similarly strong pref- erences for a set of concept images; in both cases, these tendencies are observed across source domains