Categories of Semantic Difficulty of Phrasal Verbs

Nobody has succeeded in finding a successful way of categorizing phrasal verbs semantically, that
is, in terms of meaning. Linguists who try to categorize them disagree sharply. But for the purpose
of learning and teaching them more easily, it is quite useful to posit the following three broad
categories of semantic difficulty:

1. Literal
2. Semi-idiomatic
3. Idiomatic

1. Literal

In this category, the verb retains its basic concrete meaning while the short adverb or preposition
maintains a literal meaning (Frazer, 1976 ). Such combinations are the easiest for language
learners to understand and learn.

Examples with adverbs (VA, VAO, and VOA):

walk out
fall down
hang up your coat
hang your coat up
take down the picture

Examples with prepositions (VPO):

walk out the door

fall down the stairs
come into the house
stay in the car
walk across the bridge
run through the house

Examples with adverbs plus prepositions (VAPO):

jump up on the table

come out of the house
walk away from the car
get down off the ladder
climb out through the window

2. Semi-Idiomatic

In this category, the verb retains its concrete meaning, but the short adverb or preposition adds a
nuance that would not be discernible from its basic meaning (Spasov, 1966). Even though the exact
meaning of these phrasal verbs might not be clear, an approximate meaning might be grasped by a
language learner. Examples include the following:
Examples with adverbs (VA, VAO, VOA):

write up
write down
write out

The basic notion of the three phrasal verbs above is the activity of writing, but each of the short
adverbs conveys a different nuance to that activity of writing. Other examples include these below:

wash up
wash off
wash down
read over
read through
read off
hand over
hand in
hand out
dry up
dry off
dry out
pay up
pay off
pay out
drive up
drive off
drive on

Examples with prepositions (VPO):

believe in (believe that someone will succeed)

work on (work to fix, develop, or improve something)
feed on (feed oneself with)
trust in (trust that someone will do something)
exist on (exist by using a limited resource)
insist on (insist that something happen your way)

Like the short adverbs, most prepositions of this VPO category add a nuance to the meaning of the
verb. Some, however, may serve merely as an empty connector between the verb and its object.

Examples with adverbs plus prepositions (VAPO):

read up on (study quickly and thoroughly by reading)

sneak up on (sneak towards)
listen in on (eavesdrop by listening)
fit in with (fit harmoniously, match, suit)
hold on to (hold for support)
move in on (move towards for the purpose of attacking)
meet up with (meet again by chance)

3. Idiomatic

These combinations are fully idiomatic. No part of the meaning of the combination is predictable
from the meanings of the verb and the short adverb or the preposition.

Examples with adverbs (VA, VAO, VOA):

work out (come to a successful solution)

work out (perform physical exercise)
bring up (suggest a topic)
bring up (raise children)
carry on (continue)
carry out (perform duties)
make out (see clearly)

Examples with prepositions (VPO):

count on (depend on)

run into (meet by chance)
happen on (notice something important by chance)
come across (notice something by chance)
wait on (serve someone in a restaurant)
go by (base one's judgment on)

Examples with adverbs plus prepositions (VAPO):

do away with (kill)

put up with (tolerate)
make off with (steal something and escape)
come down with (contract a disease)
run out of (exhaust one's supply of something)
live up to (meet someone's expectations)

Summary of Semantic Categories of Phrasal Verbs

Here is a summary of the three syntactic categories:

Literal:
lift up
jump off
climb down off

Semi-idiomatic:
wash up
work on
read up on
Idiomatic:
make out
wait on
put up with

The truth revealed: phrasal verbs in writing and speech

by Jonathan Marks

Popular wisdom
Some facts and figures
Phrasal verbs in academic writing
Phrasal verbs in fiction
A word of warning
To recapitulate, or sum up
Further reading
Acknowledgement
Next in the series

Popular wisdom

Widespread popular wisdom about phrasal verbs among learners and teachers is that they are:

colloquial
casual
informal
characteristic of speech rather than writing

... and perhaps even:

a bit sloppy or slovenly

uneducated
not quite proper

Although there is some basis for at least the first four of these beliefs, the reality is more complicated.

1 Some phrasal verbs are markedly informal, for example:

bum around, palm off, rat on, swan around
2 But some phrasal verbs, conversely, are decidedly formal and/or literary, for example: ascribe to, cast down, complain
of, consign to, impinge on, renege on
Note that in many, but not all, of these, the verb is of Latin origin. On the other hand, some 'Latin' verbs form register-
neutral phrasal verbs, e.g. depend on, involve in.
3 The majority of phrasal verbs are neutral, with no particular stylistic marking. "What time shall we set off?" is neutral in
conversation, while "What time shall we depart?" is unusually formal.
4 Phrasal verbs are common in many types of writing though not all as well as in speech. More about this below.
5 Phrasal verbs aren't the product of laziness or lack of education. In many cases they're simply the most common way of
expressing a certain meaning, and when people choose non-phrasal alternatives, they do so:
 to create a deliberate stylistic incongruity for humorous effect, e.g. "What time did you rise this morning?" rather than
"What time did you get up this morning?
to specify a meaning more precisely. Dress up and disguise are approximate synonyms, but "I disguised myself as a
monk" suggests an intention to deceive; this isn't necessarily implied in "I dressed myself up as a monk", which could
refer to a fancy-dress party. The phrasal verb sail through something means, more or less, to succeed easily, but
"You'll sail through your exams" seems to have a nuance of effortlessness that "You'll pass your exams easily" lacks.

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Some facts and figures

According to one source, the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, 'phrasal verbs' (verb + adverb, e.g. I put my
shoes on) occur:

1900 times per million words in fiction

1800 times per million words in conversation
1400 times per million words in newspapers
800 times per million words in academic writing

The proportions are similar to those for lexical verbs in general, except that the figure for academic writing is
disproportionately low. In other words, the distribution of phrasal verbs across these four genres is roughly the same as the
distribution of verbs in general, but they are especially rare in academic writing.

However, individual phrasal verbs can have distributions that go against the grain of this generalisation. For example, carry
out is equally common in newspapers and academic writing, but rare in conversation and fiction, and point out is more
common in academic writing than in the other three genres.

According to the same source, 'prepositional verbs' (verb + preposition, e.g. I put my shoes on the floor) are significantly
more common, occurring:

6200 times per million words in fiction

4800 times per million words in conversation
4400 times per million words in newspapers
4200 times per million words in academic fiction

Note that they are proportionately much more common than 'phrasal verbs' in academic writing.

'Phrasal-prepositional verbs' (e.g. verb + adverb + preposition, e.g. look forward to) are comparatively rare, but they are also
most common in fiction (400 occurrences per million words) and least common in academic writing (only 50 occurrences per
million words.)

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Phrasal verbs in academic writing

In academic writing, there are typically quite long stretches of text devoid of phrasal verbs. Here is a short example from a
linguistics textbook (William Croft's Typology and Universals, Cambridge University Press, 1990):

Diachronic typology, like synchronic typology, involves not just putting constraints on logically possible types but also
discovering relationships among otherwise independent grammatical parameters. The major type of constraints found on
diachronic language processes are twofold. First, sequences of language states have been found to represent a step-by-step
language process (e.g. adjective order change > genitive order change > adposition change). Unattested synchronic states are
excluded because they do not adhere to the sequence of changes entailed by the step-by-step process.
But notice that there is actually one phrasal verb in this extract: "... they do not adhere tothe sequence of changes ...". This is
a formal phrasal verb, and so its appearance in such a formal text is unsurprising or, to put it another way, it contributes
towards the formality of the text. (In the Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus dictionary, adhere to is a 'two-star' verb i.e. 'very
common' and labelled 'formal'.) And more everyday phrasal verbs do also occur in this type of writing, although not
frequently (e.g. apply to, base on, hang together, turn out).

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Phrasal verbs in fiction

The fiction component of the corpus on which the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English was based consists
mainly of fiction published after 1950. But phrasal verbs tend to be much less well represented in earlier fiction. Consider this
extract from Emily Bront's Wuthering Heights, published in 1847:

- Before I recovered sufficiently to see and hear, it began to be dawn; and Nelly, I'll tell you what I thought, and what has kept
recurring and recurring till I feared for my reason I thought as I lay there, with my head against that table leg, and my eyes
dimly discerning the grey square of the window, that I was enclosed in the oak-panelled bed at home; and my heart ached
with some great grief which, just waking, I could not recollect I pondered, and worried myself to discover what it could be;
and most strangely, the whole last seven years of my life grew a blank! I did not recall that they had been there at all. I was a
child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me, and
Heathcliff I was laid alone, for the first time, and, rousing from a dismal dose after a night of weeping I lifted my hand
to push the panels aside, it struck the tabletop! I swept it along the carpet, and then, memory burst in my late anguish was
swallowed in a paroxysm of despair

Even though this passage is presented as direct speech a long conversational turn and contains moments of informality
such as "I'll tell you what I thought", the verbs are predominantly single-word ones, many of them of Latinate origin and
some of them rather learned:

recovered recurring discerning

enclosed waking recollect
pondered discover recall
arose rousing

Nevertheless, phrasal verbs do occur as well:

feared for push aside burst in

Elsewhere in the novel, in dialogue representing more humdrum interactions, there are short sections where phrasal verbs
help to create a tone that wouldn't be out of place in a modern novel:
... I got up, and walked from the room.
... but I wouldn't turn back ...
But it was so miserable going to bed, and getting up ...
'Sit down and take your hat off, Catherine,' he answered.

It may be instructive to compare this writing from the Victorian era with a modern work of fiction. The following extract
from David Lodge's Changing Places (1975) describes a character in a curiously similar situation. Here, the vocabulary in
general is mainly Germanic and the verbs (shown in bold) are mainly idiomatic phrasal and prepositional verbs:

A searing pain bored into his hand and shot up his arm. He scrambled out from under the table, cracking his head on the
underside in his haste. He stumbled round the room, cursing breathlessly, squeezing his right hand under his left armpit and
clasping his right temple with his left hand. With one eye he was vaguely aware of the fur-coated woman backing away from
him and asking what was the matter.

The following page or so of the novel includes:

'I'll come back another time,' said the woman.
The fur coat loomed over him, ...
He went over to the desk ...
... a little quip about getting your nerve back ...
... but when he turned round ...
The woman ... backed slowly out from under the table and stood up.
... stripping off a glove and holding out her hand.
Won't you take off your coat?
I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, ...
I've got to send it on to him.

There are also a few more learned, single-word verbs:

... his hand was firmly removed from his forehead.
He withdrew his injured hand ...
... looking rather like a brown bear emerging from hibernation ...
He smiled and extended his hand.

A more thorough exegesis of this text would doubtless refer to the humorous effect arising from the juxtaposition of an
elevated style on the one hand, to describe how the man, whose position at this juncture is anything but
elevated, extended his hand, with a neutral style on the other hand, to describe the woman merely holding out hers.

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A word of warning

This kind of stylistic disjuncture is a resource available to all users of the language, of course, not just novelists. An
invocation such as "Enter, and divest yourself of those humid garments" can have a humorous and ice-breaking effect not
achievable through the more obvious "Come in, and take those wet clothes off" though only between members of a speech
community who appreciate that kind of language play; otherwise, it can come across as pretentious, patronising and divisive.
Speakers need to beware of misjudging their interlocutor, and to bear in mind that the ability to use words like divestisn't
universally appreciated and admired; sometimes phrasal verbs like take off are a better tool for the job.

The contemporary novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is castigated by Philip Hensher (in a review of When We Were Orphans, The
Observer, 19th March 2000) for not using the right tools for the job in hand:

His voice is studiedly anonymous, unfailingly formal and polite [...] There is something troubling about Ishiguro's prose style
that took me a while to pin down, and it's this he hardly ever uses a phrasal verb. He is a writer who always prefers to
say depart rather than set off, discover rather than find out.

Ishiguro's avoidance of phrasal verbs is a major problem [in this novel] it gives his narrator a circumlocutious, cautious air
which isn't really very helpful. More than that, it gives him a particular tone of voice which is not that of his social setting. It
is bizarrely unconvincing as an idea of upper-middle-class London in the 1930s I think Ishiguro will find that society
beauties did not say 'pardon' then and do not now and the inadequacy can be pinned down to the narrator's voice, and his
choice of verbs, as much as the details. Here he is on his new digs:

'Although at that point I had yet to receive a single visitor in my rooms, I issued my invitation with confidence, having chosen
the premises with some care. The rent was not high, but my landlady had furnished the place in a tasteful manner that evoked
an unhurried Victorian past.'

It may or may not be significant that Ishiguro was born in Japan, and came to Britain at the age of five. Perhaps he still retains
something of an outsider's attitude to the English language. In any case, like it or not, his idiosyncratic choice of verbs
certainly helps to emphasise the dissociation of his characters from the surrounding reality. Still, even he can't avoid phrasal
verbs entirely:

As I uttered these last words, the jazz orchestra suddenly started up within the ballroom. I have no idea if this was simply a
coincidence, but in any case the effect was to round off my statement rather nicely.

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To recapitulate, or sum up

1 Some phrasal verbs are informal, and some are formal, but most are neutral; in this respect they are no different from other
categories of vocabulary. A phrasal verb is often the neutral choice, and when people avoid using phrasal verbs in such
situations, it's as a display of linguistic versatility, often with a humorous intention, but this always entails a risk of
misjudging the situation and alienating the listener.
2 Phrasal verbs are widespread in written language as well as spoken language.
3 Phrasal verbs are relatively uncommon in academic writing, but by no means entirely absent.
4 Phrasal verbs are widespread in modern fiction apparently more so than in conversation. They are less common in
Victorian and earlier literature, but by no means entirely absent.
5 Widespread use of phrasal verbs is not evidence of lack of education or lack of linguistic competence.

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Further reading

The Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus dictionary labels phrasal verbs, where appropriate, as:

formal literary
humorous offensive
impolite old-fashioned
informal showing disapproval

It also labels verbs which are used particularly in the contexts of:

business health
computing linguistics
economics technical

You can read more about 'Register and Phrasal Verbs' in Bryan Fletcher's article in the September issue of MED Magazine.
The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999) contains a wealth of statistical information and analysis of the
use of phrasal verbs.

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Acknowledgement

Luke Prodromou alluded to the Ishiguro review in a talk at an IATEFL Poland conference, and I'm indebted to him for
furnishing me with a copy of it.

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Next in the series

Phrasal verbs are often thought of as a discrete and peculiar sector of the English language. In next month's article, I'll be
looking at how phrasal verbs fit into the larger-scale network of English vocabulary, following the same semantic and
metaphorical patterns as other lexical items.

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