THE FORUM

The TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOL profession. It also welcomes responses or rebuttals to any articles or remarks published here in The Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly.

Comments on Clayton M. Darwin and Loretta S. Grays Going After the Phrasal Verb: An Alternative Approach to Classication
A Reader Reacts . . .
JOAN H. SAWYER Brookline Adult and Community Education Program Brookline, Massachusetts, United States

The crucial notion underlying the proposal in Clayton M. Darwin and Loretta S. Grays article in TESOL Quarterly (Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring 1999) is that all verb particle combinations should be considered as phrasal verbs until they can be proven otherwise. For them, a phrasal verb consists of a verb proper and a morphologically invariable particle that function together as a single unit both lexically and syntactically (pp. 7677). The combination give up would be an example of this class. From among the traditional syntactic tests, only those showing that the combination does not function as a single unit either lexically or syntactically would rule a combination out of membership in the class of phrasal verbs. What if this approach actually rules out combinations that aid in the teaching of these structures, rather than extending the potential membership in the class of phrasal verbs, as Darwin and Gray suggest? For example, their denition would rule out walk out, which can be eliminated with adverb insertion (only one of the tests that would do this):

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1.

He walked part way out of the building before he remembered his umbrella.

In this case, the adverb part way modies only out, not the verb walk. If walk and out were functioning as a unit, this would be impossible. Combinations of this latter type are semantically transparent yet have the same surface structure as the more semantically opaque constructions that Darwin and Gray wish to concentrate on teaching. Wouldnt beginning with these semantically transparent constructions (rather than ruling them out) be simpler? In this reply to their article, I endeavor to show that, by opening the membership in the class of phrasal verbs to all combinations of verbs and morphologically invariable particles (not only the ones that function as a unit), one can include semantically transparent combinations that lead students to understand the surface structure of the combinations. This reduces avoidance of these combinations on the part of students and gives teachers a simple foundation on which to build an understanding of the functioning of the semantically less transparent combinations.

DEFINING THE PHRASAL VERB

The fact that Darwin and Gray adopt the denition of a phrasal verb as a verb particle that acts as a single word both syntactically and lexically (p. 76) suggests that what Fraser (1976) denes as verb-particle constructions and phrasal verbs are the same thing.1 This denition does not line up with the one that Fraser puts forward. The syntactic tests that Fraser supplies in the beginning of his book are intended to rule out verb preposition and verb adverb combinations (both phrasal verbs) from the true verb particle combinations (those that act as a single word) that he wishes to discuss. Thus, according to Frasers approach, phrasal verbs all include a verb and a morphologically invariable constituent (as Darwin as Gray suggest), but this latter element could be a preposition, an adverb, or what I refer to here as a real particle.2 The examples below show each type:
1 In stating this as the standard denition, Darwin and Gray are suggesting an agreement on the approach to these combinations that is not reected in the literature. A second view (held by Bennis, den Dikken, Jordens, Powers, & Weissenborn, 1995; den Dikken, 1990, 1995; Kayne, 1985, 1994; Pollock, 1996; Sawyer 1999) is that in the verb particle combination, the particle is a secondary predicate and forms a small clause. 2 To avoid confusion and draw attention to the intended meaning of the word particle, in this response the word real precedes the word particle when it references the element that forms a unit with the verb. When the word particle refers to the generic use as a morphologically invariable form, which can be a preposition, adverb, or real particle, it appears between quotation marks. Alternately, in this latter sense the word particle will be modied by the words morphologically invariable.

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2a. The woodchuck chewed around the branch. (preposition) b. The woodchuck chewed down the branch. (adverb) c. The woodchuck chewed up the branch. (real particle)

Each of the above cases includes a verb chew and a morphologically invariable particle. In Example 2a, the morphologically invariable particle is a preposition that forms a constituent (a prepositional phrase [PP]) with the noun phrase (NP) complement the branch. In Example 2b the verb chew appears with an adverb, down, which is independent of the verb. The adverb species the meaning of the verb and suggests the NP complements location in space (i.e., that the branch is now down as a result of being chewed). Finally, in Example 2c the verb chew appears with a real particle, up. In this case the real particle forms a unit with the verb and alters the meaning of chew to be that of destroy or consume.3 All three types are phrasal verbs, but only in Example 2c are the verb and particle acting as a single unit (i.e., up is a real particle). Although these examples of the three types of particles appearing in phrasal verbs are relatively uncontroversial, the difculty in recognizing the difference among them becomes apparent when the verb and all three types of particles have the same morphologically invariable form, as in the following:
3a. The cowboy shot up the hill. (preposition) b. The cowboy shot up the bullet. (adverb) c. The cowboy shot up the saloon. (real particle)

This set of examples shares the same subject, verb, and morphologically invariable particle. The only difference is the NP that follows the particle. These examples demonstrate not only the difference between the functions of the three particle types but also the danger of trying to classify a verb particle as a particular type without reference to a specic context. In each case above, the particle serves a different function. In Example 3a, up is a preposition forming a constituent (PP) with the NP the hill. The cowboy is therefore moving quickly up the hill, running or perhaps riding a horse. In Example 3b the adverb is independent of the verb. Up species the direction of the shooting and indicates that the NP the bullet, which is a complement of the verb, is moving in an upward direction as a result of being shot. Finally, in Example 3c, the particle up forms a unit with the verb. Up changes the
3 In this example, the particle was classied as a preposition, adverb, or real particle by using the tests in Fraser (1976). The reasoning behind why these tests work as they do can be found in Sawyer (1999).

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meaning of shot to something like caused a commotion or damaged by shooting a number of times. To review, if the class of phrasal verbs is taken to include cases of verb morphologically invariable particle, there would be three types: (a) verb preposition, (b) verb adverb, and (c) verb real particle.

DETERMINING WHICH PARTICLE IS WHICH

How can teachers determine which particle is which, and how does doing so help teach the three types? Bolinger (1971), Greenbaum and Quirk (1990), and Lindner (1981) used syntactic tests to demonstrate that particles behave differently in a variety of syntactic situations. Fraser (1976) suggested that there were three types (prepositions, adverbs, and real particles) and that all members of a given type would function consistently on Tests 17 in Table 1. Sawyer (1999) added Tests 8 and 9; that study reviews these tests and demonstrates why the three particle types pattern as they do (see the study for details). Because readers of Darwin and Grays article will be familiar with most of these tests and because space requirements preclude a detailed discussion, Table 1 shows only how the particle types pattern. Examples that demonstrate the classications are found in the Appendix.

TABLE 1 Syntactic Tests for Distinguishing the Three Particle Types PrepoReal sition Adverb particle No n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No

Syntactic test 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Allows both V-NP-particle and V-particle-NP word order Allows insertion of manner adverbials Allows particle and NP in sentence-initial position Allows particle on both sides of the PP in action nominalizations Particle functions as an independent constituent in gapped constructions Allows insertion of degree adverbials Allows contrastive stress of particle Particle can be initially coordinated Particle can be coordinated with prepositional phrases

Note. See the Appendix for examples.

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TEACHING PHRASAL VERBS

Knowing the particle type not only helps predict which combinations might be easily taught but also suggests the order in which they might best be presented to students. In short, the prepositional cases would not need to be taught as phrasal verbs at all. The adverb cases, which are semantically transparent, would show students how the surface structure operates and would help reduce avoidance of phrasal verbs. Last, the real-particle cases would be taught in groups according to the contribution that the real particle makes to the meaning of the verb. I suggest this order because it allows teachers to exclude the prepositional cases from the set that needs to be taught specically as phrasal verbs.

Step 1: Do Not Teach Verb-Preposition Combinations as Phrasal Verbs

In Example 2a, the meaning of the verb chew is unaffected by the addition of the preposition, and the preposition around retains its meaning as well. Similarly, in Example 3a the verb and preposition retain their normal meaning and function. There is no reason to deal with them as anything but standard verbs followed by PPs because they do not present a challenge for comprehension or production of this group. Excluding verb-preposition combinations from the class of phrasal verbs leaves only the combinations that include adverbs and real particles requiring specic instruction.

Step 2: Teach Verb-Adverb Combinations

The adverb examples contain a verb and an adverb, each of which retains its original meaning when appearing in combination. As long as the student knows the meaning of the verb and the adverb, the combination is semantically transparent. However, the adverb and realparticle cases both involve word-order alternation (shown in Example 4), and understanding how to use this alternation is crucial to using these combinations correctly. By presenting the adverb cases before the real-particle cases, teachers can focus on the word-order alternation in combinations that are easy to understand and produce.
4a. The hurricane knocked the tree over. (split) b. The hurricane knocked over the tree. (nonsplit)

Once students realize that the verb and the adverb retain the standard meaning, teachers can demonstrate that the object can appear either between the verb and the particle (the split form) or after the

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particle (the nonsplit form). The teacher need add only that the nonsplit form is ungrammatical when the object is a pronoun:
5a. The hurricane knocked it over. b. *The hurricane knocked over it.

Teachers should have no difculty nding verb-adverb combinations to teach. Sawyers (1999) longitudinal study of spontaneous speech in children between the ages of 1 and 7 years found the following adverbs occurring with multiple verbs: across, ahead, along, apart, around, away, back, by, down, forth, forward, in, off, on, out, over, past, through, together, under, and up. Verbs such as push and pull work with large numbers of adverbs. One of the apparent advantages to teaching word order with semantically transparent examples is that seeing these understandable combinations gives students condence. When they begin working on less transparent types, they no longer need to be concerned with word order.

Step 3: Teach VerbReal Particle Combinations

Although some idiomatic combinations must be learned individually, others can be taught in groups. Sawyers (1999) study of child language acquisition demonstrated that there are at least three common functions for real particles. The rst is telicity or completiveness, which has been claimed as a function of the real particle up (Tenny, 1994; van Hout, 1997, 1998) in examples such as eat up and drink up. In these combinations, the item that appears as the object of the action (an apple or milk) is consumed completely. Other examples are chew up, tear up, and use up. Teachers can demonstrate each real particle in this group by presenting a series of verbs with which the real particle has the telic reading (e.g., up with verbs of consumption such as eat and drink). Thus, students may begin to see a pattern that they can use to decode new combinations encountered. A second group for which it is easy to supply examples is real particles that do not seem to add much semantically to the verb. Examples of this group are clean up, lock up, wash up, act out, sort out, and start out. Again, teachers would demonstrate each real particle that works this way with a set of verbs to which it adds little semantically. Again, the students would see that these are not isolated cases but show a pattern. The third group consists of idiomatic combinations that must be learned individually, such as give up, think up, and wear out. These combinations are the most difcult to organize into groups for presentation; they must be presented in context. Whether there are certain contexts that naturally include a

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large number of them or whether enough of them would be encountered naturally in reading newspapers or literature is a question worthy of further investigation.

CONCLUSION
The fact that particles can be effectively separated into prepositions, adverbs, and real particles is an important step. Analysis of their different functions offers teachers one way of considering which ones to teach and suggests a step-by-step process for doing so. In this approach, the prepositional cases do not need to be taught as phrasal verbs because the verb and preposition retain their normal meaning and function. Presenting semantically transparent adverbial forms before real-particle forms teaches the intricacies of the word order and builds students condence. In the case of real particles, as Darwin and Gray note, teaching combinations divided into groups by verb may not be the most efcient approach. The fact that real particles can be clustered into groups by function (e.g., verbs that go with up that are telic, those that go with out that add nothing) makes teaching more efcient. Teaching the real particles by their function in groups of verbs may help students learn patterns for decoding new combinations and increasing their vocabularies while reducing their avoidance of these combinations. This method also suggests a direction for future research. The fact that there seem to be some patterns in the functions of real particles is encouraging and suggests that more work should be done to identify as many new patterns as possible. The more similarities that can be found and described, the fewer combinations will need to be taught as individual lexical items. Also, as Darwin and Gray point out, because little is known about which combinations are most commonly used, corpus studies are needed. The data used for Sawyers 1999 study identied conversations between children and adults; a study of the adult data is now underway. Second, the method presented in this response, while intuitively appealing, has yet to be demonstrated in the classroom. Sawyer and Whitlows (1999) study seeks to test the effects of this method on adult learners of English in the Boston area.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Julie Whitlow for bringing Darwin and Grays article to my attention and for suggesting that I respond to it, and Marco Haverkort for his careful reading of this response and useful suggestions for its improvement.

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REFERENCES
Bennis, H., den Dikken, M., Jordens, P., Powers, S., & Weissenborn, J. (1995). Picking up particles. In D. MacLaughlin & S. McEwen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 1, pp. 7081). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Bolinger, D. (1971). The phrasal verb in English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. den Dikken, M. (1990). The structure of English complex particle constructions. In R. Bok-Bennema & P. Coopmans (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands (pp. 2332). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris. den Dikken, M. (1995). Particles: On the syntax of verb-particle, triadic, and causative constructions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, B. (1976). The verb-particle construction in English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greenbaum, S., & Quirk, R. (1990). A students grammar of the English language. Essex, England: Longman. Kayne, R. (1985). Principles of particle constructions. In J. Gueron, G. Obenauer, & J.-Y. Pollock (Eds.), Grammatical representation (pp. 101140). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris. Kayne, R. (1994). The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lindner, S. (1981). A lexico-semantic analysis of English verb particle constructions (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1981). Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 09A. (University Microlms No. 8205341) Pollock, J.-Y. (1996). Case checking and particle constructions. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Sawyer, J. (1999). Verb adverb and verb particle constructions: Their syntax and acquisition (Doctoral dissertation, Boston University, 1999). Dissertation Abstracts International, 60, 03A. Sawyer, J., & Whitlow, J. (1999). Verb-adverb and verb-particle constructions: Teaching and acquisition. Manuscript in preparation. Tenny, C. L. (1994). Aspectual roles and the syntax-semantics interface. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. van Hout, A. (1997). Learning telicity: Acquiring argument structure and the syntax/ semantics of direct objects. In E. Hughes, M. Hughes, & A. Greenhill (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 2, pp. 678688). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. van Hout, A. (1998). On the role of direct objects and particles in learning telicity in Dutch and English. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H. Littleeld, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 2, pp. 398408). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

APPENDIX Examples for Syntactic Tests

1. Word order (contrasts preposition, adverb, and real particle) a. The woodchuck chewed around the branch. (preposition) b. *The woodchuck chewed the branch around. c. The woodchuck chewed down the branch. (adverb)

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

d. The woodchuck chewed the branch down. e. The woodchuck chewed up the branch. (real particle) f. The woodchuck chewed the branch up. Insertion of manner adverbials (contrasts preposition, adverb, and real particle) a. The gladiators drove recklessly off the path. (preposition) b. *The gladiators drove courageously off the enemy. (adverb) c. The elderly couple looked longingly up the hill. (preposition) d. *The elderly couple looked hopefully up the information. (real particle) Sentence initial position4 (contrasts preposition, adverb and real particle) a. Up the hill looked the elderly couple. (preposition) b. *Up the information looked the elderly couple. (real particle) c. Off the path drove the gladiators. (preposition) d. *Off the enemy drove the gladiators. (adverb) Action nominalizations (contrasts adverb and real particle only) a. The blowing (around) of the leaves (around) frustrated the gardener. (adverb) b. The blowing (up) of the photo (*up) was complete in an hour. (real particle) c. The guests knocking (over) of the vase (over) was clumsy. (adverb) d. The knocking (off) of designer clothing (*off) is a huge industry. (real particle) Function of the particle in gapped constructions (contrasts adverb and real particle only) a. The storm blew the tree over and the wind [ ] the leaves away. (adverb) b. *The brilliant lecture blew the students away and the terrorists [ ] the building up. (real particle) c. Jack knocked the green marble in and Jill [ ] the red one out. (adverb) d. *Bubba knocked his enemy out and the thieves [ ] the spring designs off. (real particle) Insertion of degree adverbials (contrasts adverb and real particle only) a. A hurricane knocked the tree part way over. (adverb) b. *The thieves knocked the spring designs part way off. (real particle) c. The wind blew the tree part way down. (adverb) d. *The terrorists blew the building part way up. (real particle) Contrastive stress of the particle (contrasts adverb and real particle only) a. The incompetent goal keeper knocked the ball IN. (not out) (adverb) b. *The thieves knocked the spring designs OFF (not ?) (real particle) c. The wind blew the leaves AROUND. (not away) (adverb) d. *The brilliant lecture blew the students AWAY. (not ?) (real particle) Initial coordination (contrasts adverb and real particle only) a. The child turned the lights both on and off. (adverb) b. Bruno pushed the weights both up and down. (adverb) c. *Julia looked the information both up and over. (real particle) d. *Don Juan picked the beautiful girl both out and up. (real particle) Coordination of the particle with a PP (contrasts adverb and real particle only) a. He pulled his hood both up and over his head. (adverb) b. He jerked the spatula both up and out of the re. (adverb) c. *The little boy threw his dinner both up and into the garden. (real particle) d. *Mario called Jane both up and on the phone. (real particle)

4 Some informants claim that sentence-initial PPs sound antiquated or perhaps poetic, but these informants agree that they are markedly better than their adverb or real-particle counterparts.

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