Verb
Particles (AKA phrasal verbs, verb-adverb combinations)
In modern standard English we also have an interesting
construction whereby a preposition combines with a verb to form a new verb.
Verb +
preposition = new verb
In this case, the preposition isn’t acting as a preposition;
it’s acting as a kind of enclitic particle attached to the verb, though in
written English we do not attach it to the verb, at least not any more. When
this construction was new, the preposition was
attached to the verb with a hyphen, and you can still see people of a certain
age, or those who were taught by those people, writing this construction that
way.
Jarvis
hung-up the phone.
Examples of verb-particle combinations or phrasal verbs are shut up, f**k off, pick on, hand in, dress
down, blow up, think over, and so on.
Polly
handed in her test early.
Horace
dressed down the tardy employee.
We can tell these from prepositions and from adverbs in a few
ways. First, while prepositions and their noun phrases function as a phrase,
here we have a verb and a preposition/particle functioning as a phrase.
Horace
ran down the road.
Horace ran
down his wife’s cousin.
Ivy ran
into Elvis downtown.
Ivy ran into
the woods.
Second, often verb-particle phrases can be replaced a different,
single verb.
Horace criticized
his wife’s cousin.
Ivy met
Elvis downtown.
Finally, when the preposition is part of a phrasal verb, or a verb particle, often
the preposition can be moved:
Polly handed
in her test early.
Polly handed
her test in early.
Horace ran
down his wife’s cousin.
Horace ran
his wife’s cousin down.
This won’t be true when the preposition is part of a
prepositional phrase:
Horace
ran down the road.
Horace ran
the road down. (Nope)
None of these tests are 100% fool-proof, however, except the
semantic one. We have to Learn to recognize which group of words is acting as a
unit – the verb phrase or the prepositional phrase.
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