1) DIFFERENT NAMES
2) INTRODUCTION
3) PREPOSITIONS AND ABVERBS PARTICLES
4) PREPOSITIONAL VERBS AND PHRASAL VERBS
5) SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS
6) SYNTACTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS
7) OTHER SYNTACTIC DIFFICULTIES
8) SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS
9) PHRASAL-PREPOSITIONAL VERBS
10) THE MEANINGS OF PARTICLES IN PHRASAL VERBS
11) PHRASAL VERBS WITH MORE THAN ONE MEANING
12) PHRASAL VERBS AND IDIOMS
13) NOUN FORMS OF PHRASAL VERBS
14) VERBS WITH PREFIXES
15) STUDYING PHRASAL VERBS WITH THE AID OF SPANISH
16) FINAL REMARKS
1) DIFFERENT NAMES
Verbs with prepositions or adverbial particles such as put into and take off have, among others, the following names: multi-word verbs, two-word verbs, two-part verbs, merged verbs, compound verbs, verb-adverb combinations and phrasal verbs. It is this last name that is the most widely used and the one we are going to employ here. It sounds good enough, since, for example, some of these verbs are actually three-word verbs, and in fact the verbs we are going to discuss are not words but rather phrases which have a verb as head, therefore verb phrases, and the semantic unit they form can thus be called phrasal verbs.
2) INTRODUCTION
To the learner of English, PVs are one of the most frustrating aspects of the language. The student discovers, to his dismay, that there are many usual word combinations whose meaning apparently bears little or no relationship to the individual words of which they consist. He easily learns, for example, the words call and off, and later on he discovers that there is a phrase call off which means cancel. And then many other such combinations.
Many people argue that these expressions are unpredictable and patternless. Nevertheless, these verbs actually have pattern and consistency, although with a whole range of degree. The more one knows, for example, about the meanings of particles, the more one can infer meanings in PVs. Besides, new verbs are constantly being created, and they are actually based on existing patterns, not fancy. PVs of movement and position, in general, are particularly literal: both the base and the particle mean the same as when they are not used together (e.g. come in, go up, walk past).
Of course, in any case, the difficulties are many. We might expect that they could be freely formed by combining verbs with any particle in at least its typical meanings; yet this is not the case: we cannot create a phrasal verb by arbitrarily combining verbs and particles (e.g. *worry down, *pay away).
3) PREPOSITIONS AND ABVERB PARTICLES
Compare the following sentences:
My car started rolling down the hill.
I can dive off the top board.
My car’s just broken down.
We’ll have to put the party off.
In the first pair, down and off are prepositions. Like all prepositions, they are used with objects. In the last two examples, down and off are not prepositions. (Down has no object in the third sentence; in the fourth, the party is the object of put, or put off together, not of off.) Down and off, in these cases, are used rather like adverbs, to change the meaning of the verb (broken down = stopped; put off = postpone), and they are called adverb(ial) particles.
On the whole, the same words can act as both prepositions and adverb particles: up, down, on, off, through, past, etc. However, the two groups are not exactly the same. For example, at, for, from, into, of, with are used only as prepositions; away, back, out are used only as adverb particles.
According to the Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, the commonest six particles in phrasal verbs are, in decreasing order, up, out, off, in, on, down; 15 particles occur in fewer than ten combinations; the adverb particle aback, usual in former times, only occurs in modern English in the verb take aback (‘astonish’).
4) PREPOSITIONAL VERBS AND PHRASAL VERBS
A distinction is usually made between prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs, since they are similar, confusing concepts. Some authors consider verbs like look after (Please look after the children) and fall for (I’ve fallen for you in a big way) to be prepositional verbs, and then only verbs like get up, in which the particle is adverbial, are called phrasal verbs. But many more authors call both these kinds phrasal, and leave the term prepositional verbs for those like look at, listen to, think about and insist on, which are just look, listen think and insist which usually happen to have a prepositional phrase as object, the meaning of course remaining unaltered. In this case, the preposition may not appear in the sentence at all, as can be seen by using the imperative form (Look, Listen, Think, Insist). We follow these authors in considering that, even if the particle is a preposition, we have a phrasal verb if the preposition and the base verb are rather semantically linked; thus, look for is a phrasal verb in that it is not exactly look + for, but rather like the verb seek.
Sometimes, the same combination is both a verb-preposition sequence and a phrasal verb, depending on the context/use. Compare:
The boy ran into the room. (literal)
Mr Brown ran into an old friend yesterday. (‘met by chance’)
I turned into King Street and drove along for about 100 yards. (literal)
The frog turned into a handsome prince. (‘became’)
The passers-by looked into the window curiously. (literal)
Have the police looked into the bank robbery? (‘investigated’)
Please call up the stairs and wake the children. (literal)
I want to call up the shop, but I don’t know the number. (‘phone’)
The two women enjoy talking over the fence. (literal)
The committee is talking over our report. (‘discussing’)
These pairs of sentences illustrate differences not only in meaning, but also in the relationship of the syntactic elements. The first in each pair illustrates the use of prepositional phrases as place adverbials, the noun phrase being the object of just the preposition. The second in each pair has a prepositional particle in a verb unit, and the following noun phrase can be considered the object of either the preposition or the whole phrasal verb. Thus, we can compose questions with where in the first case and give meaningful answers by using a prepositional phrase, but not in the second case, where who(m) or what is required to ask about the direct object. Compare:
‘Where did the boy run?’ ‘Into the street.’ (meaningful)
‘Where did Mr Brown run?’ * ‘Into an old friend?.’ (not meaningful)
‘Who did Mr Brown run into?’ ‘An old friend.’ (meaningful)
‘Where do the two women enjoy talking?’ ‘Over the fence.’
(meaningful)
‘Where is the committee talking?’ * ‘Over our report.’
(not meaningful)
‘What is the committee talking over?’ ‘Our report.’ (meaningful)
5) SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS
Many English verbs consist of two parts: a base verb (bring, take, come, etc) and a grammatical word of either of the two kinds mentioned above. The phrasal verb is a semantic unit having a meaning which often differs from the sum of the meanings of the individual parts. In this way we can include, as we have said, apparently prepositional verbs like look for and call on, which respectively mean seek and visit.
Anyway, in some cases the meaning of a two-part verb is simply a combination of the meanings of the two words. Examples are come in, run away, walk across.
In other cases, the first word keeps its meaning, but the second has a special ‘intensifying’ sense - it means something like completely or thoroughly. Examples are break up, tire out. Similarly, the particle may simply emphasize the base, as in spread out.
In still other cases, the new two-part verb has quite a different meaning from the two separate parts: give up means ‘surrender’, blow up means ‘explode’.
6) SYNTACTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS
A phrasal verb fulfils normal verb functions in English sentences. From a syntactic point of view, a phrasal verb is, in a way, like other verbs.
For instance, when the particle is an adverb, the phrasal verb can be transitive or intransitive.
Examples of transitive verbs:
bring sth up (mention) bring sb up (raise, rear, educate)
put sth off (postpone) put sb up (accommodate)
throw st away turn sth down (refuse) kick sb out (expel)
Examples of intransitive verbs:
get up, sit down, break down, turn up (= arrive, appear)
· Transitive
When a phrasal verb has a direct object, the two parts of the verb can usually be separated: the adverb particle can be put either before or after the object.
We’ll have to put off the party / put the party off.
Could you put up my sister / put my sister up for three nights?
Why don’t you throw away that stupid hat / throw that stupid hat
away?
However, when the object is a pronoun (e.g. her, us, this), the adverb particle can only go after the object.
We’ll have to put it off. (Not: *... put off it.)
Could you put her up? (Not: *... put up her.)
This kind of phrasal verbs are usually called separable.
Sometimes, a separable phrasal verb is not actually separated because the object is either too long or syntactically complex:
I put on the hat that I had bought the day before.
(Not: * I put the hat that I had bought the day before on.)
When, on the other hand, the particle is a preposition, the verb is usually inseparable; in this case the particle is not separated even if the object is a pronoun:
Get on the bus / it.
Wait on the customers / them.
Look for the money / it.
They’re looking into these matters / them.
This is another reason for regarding a verb like look for as an ordinary transitive verb, like seek.
As many of the particles have both adverbial and prepositional usages, as we have said, it is not always easy to infer or know whether the phrasal verb is separable or inseparable: on, for example, is a preposition in Get on the bus and therefore the verb get on is inseparable here, but it is an adverb in Get yout coat on and therefore the verb get on is separable in this case, where it means put on. This is basically the reason why many say you have to learn by heart whether the verb is separable or not.
· Intransitive
If a phrasal verb is intransitive (i.e. has no object), there is of course no problem of separability, and the particle in this case is always an adverb, since a preposition is always used together with a noun phrase.
However, sometimes adverbs can come between the base and the particle.
The procession passed (slowly) by.
Some of the more common phrasal verbs without objects are scarcely distinguishable from the verb-adverb sequence:
Why did the boy run away?
Please step aside and turn round.
The doctor told him to lie down for an hour.
What’s going on here?
Others carry the meaning of the verb but not of the function word; that is, the particle seems to be unnecessary as far as meaning is concerned.
The children ran off to play in the park.
The bus slowed down at the corner.
Move over so the others can sit down.
I used to wake up in the middle of the night.
Still others have meanings that vary greatly from the individual meanings of their separate parts:
You’ll have to back up and then turn round. (go backwards)
I wish that man would shut up. (stop talking)
How did the accident come about? (happen)
The meeting turned out to be interesting. (proved)
Some of the verbs with objects also occur intransitively. In most cases the meaning is the same and it is basically only the structure that changes.
The following sentences include separable verbs also used without an object:
If I turn anything up, I’ll let you know.
If anything turns up, I’ll let you know.
You’re really going to wear out the soles of your shoes.
The soles of your shoes are really going to wear out.
The particle is adverbial in both cases.
Examples of inseparable verbs also used without an object:
get on, get off, get in, get through
In this case, the particle is adverbial only when the verb is intransitive.
The syntax of phrasal verbs actually involves more complexity than that which has been described in this chapter, other syntactic patterns existing as well. For example, in some transitive phrasal verbs with an adverbial particle, the particle must - rather than may - follow the object, even if this is a simple noun. In other words, the verb is not merely separable, but actually separated. Examples:
They have gone to the airport to see their daughter off.
As the baby was ill, he kept the whole family up until the small hours.
The sooner we get the cleaning over the better.
Yet, we have been dealing with the most common cases by far.
7) OTHER SYNTACTIC DIFFICULTIES
There are still other special syntactic difficulties. The following are the main ones, in our view:
a) There are frequently strong collocational associations between PVs and other words. Thus, in some cases a particular word or small set of words is the only one normally found as the subject or object of a particular verb; for example, map out has a personal subject and its object is usually a word which is similar in meaning to plan or task.
b) Some PVs are only used in negative sentences. For example:
I wouldn’t dream of asking my mother to look after her.
When this verb is not a PV, this restriction does not apply:
What were you dreaming of when I woke you up?
c) It is not always obvious whether a PV can be used in the passive voice. One could argue that those with a direct object can readily be made passive, while the others simply cannot.
Hardly anyone knew about the takeover. It had been successfully hushed up by the management.
However, the question is more complex. There are transitive PVs which do not have a passive form (e.g. get sth down, ‘write sth down’, get sb down, ‘make sb unhappy’); and there are PVs with prepositions that do not have a passive form, and others that do have one, with the object of the preposition becoming the S of the V (go into a matter, ‘describe it fully or in detail’; go through an official procedure, ‘be made to do all the things that are required’. Besides, some phrasal verb are only used in the passive, and more of them are simply more common in the passive; thus, we have these typically passive verbs, for example: to be sold out, to be worn out, to be got at (= to be bribed or blackmailed).
8) SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS
The principles we have been discussing of phrasal verbs - regardless of type - functioning as both a grammatical and a syntactic unit can be said to work together, as can be seen in the following equivalences:
Have you called on / visited Mrs Johnson?
I didn’t leave out / omit any questions.
The child is not being properly brought up / raised.
9) PHRASAL-PREPOSITIONAL VERBS
There are a comparatively small number of verbs which consist of three parts: a base verb, an adverb particle, and a preposition, in this order. These three-word phrasal verbs are sometimes called phrasal-prepositional verbs. Two examples are get on with, ‘have a (good/bad) relation with’, and put up with ‘tolerate’.
These phrasal verbs are inseparable. They look complicated, but, in principle, they are used in the same way as any other prepositional verbs. Compare:
I get on well with Jill.
I often go to the theatre with Jill.
He’s difficult to put up with.
He’s difficult to work with.
Other examples:
go in for (= be interested in)
stand up for (= support)
look up to (= respect)
look down on (= despise)
look forward to (= anticipate anxiously)
do away with (=eliminate)
Yet there is actually another difficulty here: some phrasal verbs are typically, but not always, used with a second particle. For example, catch up has particular meanings which allow with as a second particle (but it is not necessarily present) and other meanings which actually require with as a second particle; and keep up has different meanings, some disallowing with, others which allow it, and still one which requires it.
10) THE MEANINGS OF PARTICLES IN PHRASAL VERBS
Contrary to the general belief, particles in phrasal verbs do have consistent meanings. One of the problems is that there are so many of them that they are difficult to perceive. There are literally dozenss altogether, especially if we include primary as well as secondary meanings, and therefore we would need quite a long time to just mention them.
In general, the more common a meaning is, the more ‘literal’ it is thought of. This is especially the case with particles denoting physical position or direction of movement, like up, down and back and away. But whereas back - and to a lesser degree away - is easily seen as having one very broad, basic meaning (but with many steps from the most literal to the most figurative or metaphorical usages), up and down, for example, are usually considered literal by foreign students only when they express upward and downward direction. But the fact is that these, like most others of the 48 particles, have some more systematic meanings, with a particle such as without having just one meaning (without refers to the absence of sth, as in I can’t do without a cigarette after dinner). So let us nowconcentrate on giving just a few common meanings of up and down.
a) Up
· Moving closer together or staying close together.
I dashed up to him and shook hands.
Thus, when sb catches up with you, they get closer to you, and when they creep up on you, they approach you quietly and secretly. And if you keep up with sb else, you stay close to them by moving at the same speed as them.
Other verbs:
go up, come up, walk up, march up, run up, rush up, drive up, sail up, swim up.
When the combination is a transitive verb, up indicates that things are being brought closer together, so if you line up some objects, you place them together in a line.
Some other combinations give the idea that the quality of sth is close to the quality of another thing, so if sth measures up to what was expected, its quality is as good as it was expected to be.
· Completing and finishing
Compare:
You’ll never get rich if you don’t save.
They have saved up enough money to go for a holiday.
(The saving here is complete enough for a definite purpose.)
So up often indicates that sth has been done completely or thoroughly. Other verbs:
burn up wake up wash up tie up
dry up fill up sweep up grind up
heal up shut up tidy up
As an extension of this, if you tear up a piece of paper, you tear it into small pieces, you do not just tear the edge. Other typical verbs with the meaning ‘into small pieces’ are
break up cut up
As still another extension of this meaning, you can use up to indicate that sth has been totally consumed or used. The verb often indicates how this happens, so if sb drinks up, they finish what they are drinking so that there is none left. Other verbs:
use up swallow up finish up
Further, if you hang up the telephone, you end the conversation.
b) Down
· Collapsing, attacking and destroying
This adverb is used in combinations which contain ideas of collapsing, cutting and destruction. Down helps to give the idea that sth falls to the ground or is forced to the ground during the process. For example, if you chop down a tree, you cut through its trunk until it falls, and if a building burns down, it is completely destroyed by fire and collapses onto the ground. Other verbs:
fall down pull down cut down
knock down
break down
tear down
· Writing and recording
Example:
The reasons have all been set down clearly in this article.
Other verbs:
write down put down mark down
copy down take down
note down get down
11) PHRASAL VERBS WITH MORE THAN ONE MEANING
Another complication of phrasal verbs is that very many of them have several meanings.
Of course, as in vocabulary at large, very often some meanings are derived from others, typically figurative meanings from primary ones.
A verb with different meanings often keeps the meaning of the particle:
put back ® replace, return ï delay)
But sometimes this also changes:
let down ® drop ï fail (sb)
An example of verbs with several distinct meanings is pass on, which can be intransitive and transitive; in the latter case, it can be separable and inseparable; of course it can also be just the sequence of the verb pass plus the preposition in a place adverbial.
- Intransitive: Mr Smith passed on last night at the age of 91.
- Transitive and inseparable: The firm passes on all costs to customers.
- Transitive and separable (the most common use of this verb, with several related meanings, as can be seen from these typical objects):
pass on information /a message to sb
pass on physical characteristics to one’s children
pass on money to one’s heirs
pass on customs/traditions/skills to the following generation
- Verb + prepositional phrase: Lots of lorries passed on the motorway.
Still plenty of them have several distinct meanings with the same syntactic pattern. For example, make up, apart from its intransitive usages with such meanings as become reconciled, is frequently used with, among others, the following meanings, all of them in transitive, separable usage:
- invent, think up: My husband made up a funny story for the children.
- compound, put together: The chemist made up the doctor’s prescription.
- make ready: She told me to make a bed up in the guest bedroom.
- complete, supplement: How much do you need to make up the total?
- apply cosmetics to: Susan quickly made up her face.
12) PHRASAL VERBS AND IDIOMS
Some phrasal verbs are used in idioms:
They’re always trying to keep up with the Joneses.
That scene brought the house down.(colloquial) (= made the audience
applaud enthusiastically)
You should make up your mind soon.
More usually, the distinctive feature of the idiom is the obligatory inclusion of it with a very broad sense, as in
He made it up to his mother. (= He did sth to her to return a favour, or
to show he was sorry for having made her
disappointed)
Being human, he can only keep it up for eight hours a day.
She sweated it out to the end.
Much more usually, it is the phrasal verb itself that can be regarded as idiomatic. As a matter of fact, all phrasal verbs which are not obviously literal are idioms in a way, and a book like Idioms in Practice contains a chapter entitled ‘Idioms using phrasal verbs’ which are actually ‘difficult’ phrasal verbs.
13) NOUN FORMS OF PHRASAL VERBS
Many English nouns are derived from PVs. Some have typical noun suffixes, especially
-er for person (agent). There are two types of nouns, the first being more classic and the second more recent:
a) by-pass (from pass by; then turned into a verb meaning
‘provide (a town) with a ~’; ‘ignore’: Let’s by-pass
that proposal)
bystander (from stand by)
outbreak (from break out)
outburst (from burst out)
outcome (from come out)
outlook (from look out)
upbringing (from bring up)
b) drop-out hold-up
go-between check-up
looker-on make-up
passer-by slip-up
feedback
drawback
setback
sit-in
take-off
Some collocations including nouns of this kind are
do the washing-up
make a blow-up of a photo
have a breakdown
14) VERBS WITH PREFIXES
As happens even more frequently in languages such as German, English also has many verb formations of Germanic origin with the equally Latin morphological structure consisting of prefix plus base verb, like understand. These verbs resemble phrasal verbs in a number of ways, but they are much less complex syntactically. Here are other examples:
outlive (= live longer than)
outstay (= stay longer than)
overtake (= catch up with, outstrip)
overthrow (= defeat; put an end to; cause to fall or fail)
undergo (= go through)
update (= bring to date)
uplift (= raise spititually or emotionally)
upset (= overturn ½ trouble)
withhold (= keep back)
withstand (= resist)
15) STUDYING PHRASAL VERBS WITH THE AID OF SPANISH
There are certainly clues for helping foreigners with phrasal verbs, as should be already clear.
A)
Another one is how PVs can sometimes be translated. Take a sentence like Andreotti used to breeze through any crisis (“Andreotti solía atravesar las crisis con desenvoltura”); a Spanish student is at a loss because the concept that we express by means of an adverb or adverbial (“desenvueltamente”) is expressed by the English verb (to breeze), whereas the concept we express by means of the verb (“atravesar”), is expressed by the English particle (through). It is thus important to understand that each particle usually expresses at least one verbal concept, and normaly several.
The easiest is usually the concept of direction of movement:
to “ir hasta”
up “subir” ï “acercarse”
down “descender”
into “entrar a”
on “continuar”
off “alejarse”
across “atravesar” (surface)
through “atravesar” (volume)
over “acercarse”
around “girar alrededor”
back “tornar, volver, devolver ...”
away “alejarse”
If these particles are used with verbs like walk (whose adverbial meaning is conveyed in Spanish by “a pie, andando”), run (“a la carrera, corriendo”) or limp (“cojeando”), we will have dozens of new verbs: walk away will be translated as “alejarse/irse andando”; run away, “alejarse/irse corriendo”; limp away, “alejarse/irse cojeando”; walk on, “seguir andando”; run on, “seguir corriendo”; and so forth.
It can be argued that, if we say that “ir a la estación”, in English one usually specifies how this is done, but by means of the verb: go / come / walk / run / limp / crawl / jump / rush / ride / drive ... to the station. And if we mean “entrar al garaje”, the same thing occurs: go / come / walk / run / limp / crawl / jump / rush / ride / drive ... into the garage. “¡Sube!” will be, for instance, either Go up! (away from me) o Come up! (to me). It can be seen that we do not have to say how in Spanish (the base verb in English), but we do say the verb (the English particle): He walked back at once can be translated as “Regresó de inmediato”, partly because how (on foot) does not seem relevant or can be inferred from the context, a case unlike He hurried back (“Volvió de prisa”).
The beginning of Tom Sharpe’s humorous novel Wilt is a good, sustained example of the use of walk followed by numerous particles expressing direction, the translation of which can be made as has been pointed out.
But this kind of equivalences can also be seen in PVs which do not denote movement. Examples:
water down the whisky (down indicates ‘decreasing, lowering,
reducing’)
® “rebajar el whisky con agua”
blow out the candles (out indicates ‘ending or disappearing’)
® “apagar las velas soplando”
drink up the beer (up indicates ‘completing’)
® “terminarse de beber la cerveza”
Again, we do not usually have to say how in Spanish, and can therefore omit “con agua / soplando / de beber”.
There is a similar, less frequent pattern of equivalences in which instead of the manner (how) we say the object (what) in Spanish. Examples:
look up ® ”alzar la vista”
look away ® “apartar la mirada”
hit back ® “devolver el golpe”
pay back ® “devolver el dinero”
..........................
B)
Another interesting clue is that we can see phrasal verbs just as the Germanic version of a way of creating verbs that also took place in Latin and that therefore also exists in Spanish - and in English itself at that.
The following are just a few examples through which we can realize that the same or a similar idea is present in the prefix in Spanish and in the postposed particle in the English PV, as well as in the verb roots in both languages:
“ad-mirar” ® look up to
“de-poner” ® put down
“pro-seguir” ® keep on
“re-llenar” ® fill up
“sobre-salir” ® stand out
“trans-currir” ® go by
And we can also find out that there are often Latin-derived English equivalents. A few examples are:
· From captum/ceptum, the past participle of capere (‘catch, take’):
“aceptar” ® accept [PV equivalent: take on]
· From dúcere (‘lead’ and other dynamic verbs):
“introducir” ® introduce [PV equivalent: bring in]
“producir” ® produce [PV equivalent: bring about]
“reducir” ® reduce [PV equivalent: cut down]
· From gressum, the past participle of gradior (‘walk’):
“ingresar” ® ingress (n.) [PV equivalent: go in (hospital)]
“regresar” ® regress [PV equivalent: go back]
· From míttere (‘send’):
“omitir” ® omit [PV equivalent: leave out]
· From pónere (‘put, place’):
“posponer” ® postpone [PV equivalent: put off]
· From péllere (‘throw, beat’) and its past participle pulsum:
“expulsar” ® expel [PV equivalent: throw out, kick out]
As can be seen, very often there are just similarities, or only a specific meaning of a PV matches the meaning of a Latin-derived verb, or vice versa.
Further, as with the particles of phrasal verbs, each Latin prefix has a range of meanings, usually ultimately related.
We are aware that this clue is more profitable for linguists than for students whose aim is to learn actual phrasal verbs, but the pattern, although inconsistent, can throw a new light on the difficulties of PVs. It also helps if we know about the last consonant of the prefix becoming assimilated to the following consonant in Latin, or about the origin and underlying meaning of verb roots such as Spanish -primir in exprimir, oprimir, suprimir, comprimir, deprimir, etc (to press); -cluir in incluir, recluir, concluir, etc (to close) or
-currir in incurrir, recurrir, ocurrir, etc (to run).
16) FINAL REMARKS
a) Only rarely are phrasal verbs taught or learnt with varied, systematic, consistent particle meanings, or with comparison with Latin prefixed verbs in the Romance languages or English itself, or by contrasting the meanings provided by the verb base and the particle in comparison with structures in the Romance languages.
b) Phrasal verbs are usually thought to be peculiarly English, while the truth is that such different languages as German and Italian have them (with significant differences in number of elements). An example in each of these languages:
Er stieg in Berlin aus. (He got out in Berlin.)
Mi metto addosso la giacca. (I’ll put on my jacket.)
Some languages have pronominal particles which function like the English particles in phrasal verbs. A few examples can be seen in
French: J’y tiens beaucoup; Je m’en fous;
Italian: Non ce la faccio; Che me ne frega?; Me la cavo bene;
Spanish: Me las apaño bien; Se lo pasa fatal; Lo llevas claro, chaval.
c) It is often said to native speakers that PVs tend to be rather ‘colloquial’ or ‘informal’ and more appropriate to spoken than written English, and even that it is better to avoid them and choose single-word equivalents or synonyms instead. Yet in many cases PVs and their synonyms have different ranges of meaning, style, use or collocation, so that a single-word synonym cannot be properly substituted for a PV.
As verbs at large, phrasal verbs can themselves actually be formal or informal, or at any point of the stylistic scale, including slang, as in the offensive Stop fucking around; of course many of these slang phrasal verbs are just passing fads, as happens with slang words in general.
Very often, there is a Latin equivalent in English for the phrasal verb (ascend for go up, cancel for call off, and so on. In such cases, the sigle word is usually much more formal and less frequent than the phrasal verb, so that they seem out of plce in many contexts, and students using them run the risk of sounding pompous or just unnatural.
Usually, phrasal verbs are synonymous with other phrasal verbs.
pass away = pass on
carry on = go on = keep on
turn off = switch off
d) A proof of the productivity of phrasal verbs is that their number is constantly changing, some dying away, but more being created and spreading, or their meanings being changed or new ones added. The Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, which does not include PVs either which are literal and whose meaning is clear or which are part of idioms, deals with more than 3,000 PVs and explains over 5,500 meanings.
Yet these new combinations are rarely made on a random basis - an important point we have tried to make -, but form patterns which can to some extent be anticipated. Particles often have particular meanings which they contribute to a variety of combinations, and which are productive: that is, these fixed meanings are used in order to create new combinations.
Anyway, provided one follows certain rules, PVs can even be ‘invented’, as English children do, or as is illustrated by this Bruce Springsteen line:
“You gotta ride on down in through that Tunnel of Love”
If we are lucky enough we will understand - or rather pick up - even the most recherché formations, like this, from a novel by Elmore Leonard:
“Movie stars, they either seem to fade away or James Dean out”.
If we know that out may mean ‘ending or disappearing’ (die out, blow out the candles, sell out the tickets) as well as the very common fade away, we might translate this as “Las estrellas de cine, parece que o desaparecen de la escena poco a poco, o se quitan de enmedio a lo James Dean”.
e) In any case, for foreign learners, phrasal verbs usually bring forth large lexical problems, rather than grammatical ones.
f) Last, let us remember that PVs are one more way to be accurate and economical with language. For example, you peel potatoes, but you peel the potato skin off; you wipe a table (with a cloth), but you wipe off the dust (you wipe it off from the table). Instead, we could make up a pun in Spanish: ¿Por qué limpias el polvo si ya está muy limpio y lo que está sucio es la mesa? Another example:
La tienda está cerrada
(= The shop is closed or The shop has is down ?)
