Traditional (formal) approaches
A) Bolinger (1971)
Intransitive verbs show just as clearly for the adverb, or the particle to attach itself semantically to the noun; for instance, he stands out or he stood apart. English phrasal verbs are defined by virtue of the syntactic properties of the particle; in particular, he claims that particles (such as off and on) form the most typical phrasal verbs and these particles function as adverbs or prepositions (ibid: 76). Particles, which oscillate between preposition and adverb, give rise to the so-called prepositional adverbs (ibid: 26). For instance, with prepositional adverbs a sentence like he run away or I walked home is grammatical compared to a sentence like *he run away school, or * I walked home my apartment.
B) Fraser (1976)
Strong relationships between the verb and the particle show that a verb and a particle may combine in more than one way. For example, in some verb-particle combinations a constituent alteration of meaning results from the presence of the particle and this instance is referred as a type of “systematic combination”[1] (ibid: 5). Within the class of systematic verb-particle combinations there are two types:
1. Those for which the co-occurrence restrictions on the verb and the particle are exactly the same for those which are not identical, such as drink down wherein the verb-particle combination is used transitively, but the verb alone cannot (ibid: 6).
2. Combinations like deed over and hand out while instances of systematic verb-particle combinations do not share the same co-occurrence restrictions as the corresponding verbs. For instance:
i) The old man deeded over the estate.
ii)
*
The old man deeded the estate.
iii)
Will
you please hand out the secret folders?
iv)
*
Will you please hand the secret folders? (Ibid: 6)
Cognitive Studies
A) Lindstromberg (1998)
According to this approach, the term phrasal verb or “multi-word verb” refers
to verb plus preposition combinations, which are non-literal and more or less
idiomatic (ibid: 22). Thus, pick up cannot be regarded as a phrasal verb
because both “pick” and “up” have their common literal meanings. Lindstromberg’s (1998: 9) approach to English phrasal verbs places central
emphasis on the semantics of prepositions (rather than their syntactic
properties as introduced by Bolinger’s (1971) approach), since the preposition
enables the language user to locate the subject in relation to the Landmark. In
this regard, in, from, toward, by and between
are prepositions of path because the Landmark is seen either as a container, or
as a surface, or as long and narrow or even as a point on a potential or actual
path:
a.
The Landmark as
a container:
- In/ out of the
room à location
- In/ out/ through
the roomà movement along a path
- Throughout/ all
through the roomà distribution
b. The
Landmark as a surface:
- It’s lying on/ off/
across the carpetà location
- It went onto/ off/ across
the carpetà movement along a path
- It scattered papers all
across the carpetà distribution
c. The Landmark is seen as long and narrow:
- There’s a ditch along
the roadà location
- Go along the roadà
movement along a path
- They scattered litter all
along the roadà
distribution
d. The
Landmark is seen as a point on a potential or actual path:
- It’s toward/ at/ away
from the schoolà location
- We went to/ from/ via
the schoolà movement along a path (ibid: 13)
The
aforementioned examples indicate that Lindstromberg’s (1998) approach to
English phrasal verbs is merely based on the properties of the particles. Under
this assumption, English phrasal verbs, which occur as the combination of the
verb with extremely common particles (like those of the previous examples), can
be further treated as perfective[3]
phrasal verbs (Lindstromberg 1998: 23).
Moreover, Lindstromberg
(1998) argues for the semantic classifications of phrasal verbs by virtue of
three criteria: idiomaticity, number of elements and kind of metaphor. First of
all, idiomaticity classifies phrasal verbs into non-idiomatic (put up your
hand), semi-idiomatic (knock someone out) and idiomatic (put up
with someone) (ibid: 244). The second criterion of classification refers to
the number of metaphorically used elements. In particular, a zero element
implies that in an utterance like cut up the onions, only the particle up
is used non-literally; on the other hand, in an utterance like his remark
cut her up, the verb cut in combination with the particle up
is used non-literally (ibid: 244). In this case, the semantic interaction
between “his remark” and the phrasal verb contributes to the metaphorization of
the whole sentence (IDEAS/ ARGUMENTS are WAR).
The
last criterion of Lindstromberg’s (1998) semantic classification deals with the
so-called “kind of metaphor”. In other words, phrasal verbs are further
categorized into two types: a) those deriving from a stereotypical image of an event,
an activity or, a sequence of events, such as bump someone off [=kill someone] and, b) those whose
prepositions or particles express an abstract conventional metaphor, such as she
turned him down (ibid: 245-246).
2) Rudzka-Ostyn's (2003) model
English phrasal verbs are a special type of expressions,
wherein the particle or the preposition is attached to the verb. In particular,
Rudzka-Ostyn (2003: 3) claims that if the meaning of the verb is known and if
the meaning of the particle is spatial, the phrasal verb is generally easy to
understand. In this regard, Rudza-Ostyn’s model of studying English phrasal
verbs indicates that the spatial, prototypical meaning of the most frequent
prepositions or particles is illustrated as across, along, away,
back, by, down, in, inside, into, off,
on, over, through, under and up (ibid: 3-4).
However,
Rudza-Ostyn (2003) points out that there are two basic restrictions regarding
the formation of English phrasal verbs. More precisely, the first restriction
derives from the place of the particle according to which the more figurative a
phrasal verb is, the more it forms a tight unit, and the less figurative a phrasal
verb is, the verb and the particle can be split (ibid: 1). The second
restriction deals with the passivization of phrasal verbs since only when there
is a flow of energy from an agent to an object, phrasal verbs can be used in
the passive (ibid: 1).
[1]
The boy bolted his food. à The boy bolted down his food.
Drink your milk. à Drink down your milk. (Adapted from Fraser 1976: 5)
[2]
The phonological shape
of the verb indicates that the majority of verbs occurring with particles are
monosyllabic, namely [l], [r], [m], or [n], i.e., live, run, make, nestle (Kennedy 1920; Whorf 1964; Fraser 1965).
[3]
The term perfective
mcomes from the Latin “per”, which means “through” and “-fect” comes from the
Latin word “done” or “made”; hence, “perfect” means “done through”, or that
something is done or complete (Lindstromberg 1998: 23-24).
ii) The verb-particle
combination is subject to a certain kind of blend, wherein the semantics of the
particle combine with the semantics of the verb, even if the particle and the
verb do not have similar meanings. For instance, if we consider a sentence like
let’s take up each problem one at a time, we will observe that the
prototypical meaning of the verb take combines with the prototypical meaning of the
particle up in such a way that the language user is in a position to interpret the phrasal
verb as “to deal with”, rather than as “to raise” or “to begin”.
iii) A Cognitive continuum of idiomaticity
suggests that English phrasal verbs extend from metonymic to more
metaphoric readings. On the basis of Gibbs’s (1995: 104) argument,
stating that “the figurative meanings of [idiomatic expressions] might well be
motivated by people’s conceptual knowledge that is itself constituted by
metaphor”, I claim that people’s
conceptual knowledge is firstly constituted by metonymy and then extends into
metaphor.
