[Corpora-List] Phrasal Verbs

[Brett Reynolds]

On 9-Dec-08, at 7:09 PM, J Washtell wrote:

> Sorry to be picky... but in the case of abseiling down the alps, I
> would say that "down" would almost certainly be considered a
> preposition, as opposed to a particle of a phrasal verb.

Indeed, this is the corpora mailing list, not the corpus linguistics  
mailing list, but it does seem that linguistic analysis gets too much  
of a back seat.

On p. 274, Huddleston and Pullum's _Cambridge Grammar of the English  
Language_ observes that "the term phrasal verb implies that the  
combinations concerned form syntactic constituents belonging to the  
category verb." But they argue that these are no more constituents  
than, for example, "I |went to| the store" or " I |received it from|  
my wife."

I'm not suggesting that you have to buy their analysis, but you  
clearly have to come up with explicit and defensible criteria for  
what constitutes a "phrasal verb".

Best,
Brett

<http://english-jack.blogspot.com>

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
brett.reynolds at humber.ca




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