Fabulously Frustrating Phrasal Verbs (Part I)

English is a weird and beautiful language. It has, by far, the largest vocabulary* of any language in the world. Most estimates put the number of English words at over 800,000. The next closest language is French, with about 450,000 (if my memory is correct). What makes it even worse is that many English words are combinations of two or three other words. Some of these are called phrasal verbs.

A phrasal verb is a simple verb, like get, combined with another simple preposition-like word, like up or off. For example, you can get your textbooks in the bookstore, you must get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning and you get off the bus in front of the library.

The biggest difficulty with phrasal verbs is deciding whether a verb really is a phrasal verb, or whether it is a simple verb followed by an adverb or prepositional phrase. Consider the following examples:

• I looked up the stairs.
• I looked up the word in the dictionary.

In the first sentence, look is the main verb and up the stairs is a prepositional phrase. However, in the second sentence, looked up is a phrasal verb and word is the direct object. How can you tell the difference? I have come up with a series of tests that will hopefully help you answer this question correctly more often. The rules don't work 100% of the time. There are always exceptions in English, but it's better than nothing. So....how can you tell?

1. Does the meaning of the original main verb change?

1. I looked up the stairs.
2. I looked up the word in the dictionary.
3. Children look up to professional athletes.

The original meaning of look is to see with your eyes. In the first sentence, I am using my eyes to see something at the top of the stairs. Therefore, the original meaning of look does not change and there is no phrasal verb in this sentence. Think about these phrases.

• walk down the street
• walk across the room
• walk to the store
• walk around the block
• walk over the bridge
• walk through the tunnel

In all of these cases, the meaning of walk stays the same. Therefore, none of these examples have phrasal verbs. Each one is describing where there subject walked.

In the second and third sentences, the meaning of look changes. In sentence two, look up means to find an answer in a reference book and look up to means admire. Therefore, sentences two and three both have phrasal verbs followed by direct objects (word and athletes).

2. Can you change the order of the "preposition" and the object?

This is one of the best tools for phrasal verbs. It's quick, it's easy and it's accurate. If the answer is yes, then the verb is definitely a phrasal verb. But what does this mean?

1. look up the stairs / look the stairs up
2. look up the word / look the word up

In the first pair, the phrase look the stairs up is nonsense. It has no meaning and is completely incorrect. Therefore, there is no phrasal verb. However, in the second pair, look the word up is also correct and has the same meaning, so look up is definitely a phrasal verb. Try the following examples. Which ones are phrasal verbs?

1. take off your hat / take your hat off
2. jump off the rock / jump the rock off
3. drop off the books / drop the books off
4. turn off the fan / turn the fan off
5. run off the field / run the field off

Examples 1, 3 and 4 are phrasal verbs because putting the objects hat, books and fan in the middle is ok and the meaning stays the same. 1 and 5, however, are not ok, so jump off and run off are not phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs that can be divided this way are called separable phrasal verbs.

You must be careful, though, because this rule does not always work. There is another group of phrasal verbs called inseparable phrasal verbs. This means you cannot put the object between the main verb and the "preposition".** Look at the following examples.

1. I ran into a friend at the supermarket.
2. Someone broke into my locker and stole my backpack.
3. We ran out of ice.

Run into, break into and run out of are all phrasal verbs, but they are inseparable.

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This is probably enough for now. Already there is quite a bit of information to process and you are probably getting tired of phrasal verbs. I will continue with phrasal verbs in my next blog segment. If you have any questions so far, please be sure to ask on Mr. K's Grammar Page on Facebook.

Aloha.

(Also, it is Independence Day in the United States and I have a few cold ones waiting for me in the refrigerator. Happy 4th of July!)

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*Vocabulary is an uncountable noun. There is no plural form vocabularies. You count vocabulary one word, two words.

**I put the word "preposition" in quotation marks to show that it is not really a preposition when it is in a phrasal verb. However, there is no other really good word to describe it.