TEMA 22.

MULTI-WORD VERBS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. PHRASAL VERBS

 TRANSITIVE PHRASAL VERBS

 INTRANSITIVE PHRASAL VERBS

3. PREPOSITIONAL VERBS

 PREPOSITIONAL VERBS VS. VERB + PREPOSITIONAL

PHRASE COMBINATION

 VERBS DEPENDENT ON PARTICULAR PREPOSITIONS

4. PHRASAL-PREPOSITIONAL VERBS:

 INSEPARABLE

 DITRANSITIVE

5. TEACHING MULTI-WORD VERBS

6. CONCLUSION

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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1. INTRODUCTION

A multi-word verb is a combination of a lexical verb plus another

word or words that formed a semantic and grammatical unit. Many such
verbal formations have a no apparent regard for logic in either
construction or meaning, and are felt as unpredictable and patternless.
Thus, multiword verbs are one of the most difficult areas of the English
language and they represent an obstacle on the road toward English
learners’ fluency. Let’s analyse them in detail.

2. PHRASAL VERBS

The first type I am going to analyse is phrasal verbs. A phrasal verbs

is a two-word construction formed by a lexical verb plus and adverbial
particle. These verbs function as a single unit in both meaning and
construction. As a semantic unit, the literal meaning of the two elements
does not adjust to its phrasal meaning, in other words, their meaning
cannot be predicted from the meaning of the individual parts, as for
example in: “Did you make up the story?”, the verb make up is a whole
unit meaning invent. Another semantic difficulty is that many of them
may have more that one meaning. Taking the above-mentioned example,
“make up” means invent but also represent, form, and come to terms, as
in the following examples:

“This sum makes up my entire income for a year” (represent)

“Who exactly makes up the opposition in Kuwait?” (form)
“After some discussion we finally made up” (come to terms)

Syntactically speaking phrasal verbs can be divided into transitive and

intransitive verbs:

 Intransitive phrasal verbs are characterised by the absence of a

direct object and as a result the adverbial particle cannot be
separated from the lexical verb. Let’s see some examples:
“She turned up 20 minutes earlier than expected”
“The music died away”
 Transitive phrasal verbs are more numerous and are those which
take a direct object, as for example in:
“They have call off the strike”
“We look up the words in the dictionary”
“They found out new clues”

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Transitive phrasal verbs are peculiar in that they allow their two parts to
be separated. To do so we have to take into consideration the following
rules:

1) If the direct object is realised by a short noun group, the adverb of

the phrasal verb can either precede or follow the object, for example:

“He picked up the book” OR “He picked the book up”

2) The two parts of the phrasal verb must be separated if the direct
object is realised by an unstressed personal pronoun, the pronoun
object must come between the two parts, as in the following example:

“He picked up the children” > “He picked them up”

“He looked up the word in the dictionary” > “He looked it up in the
dictionary”

3) The two parts of the phrasal verb tend to appear together if followed
by a long nominal group as its direct object, as in the following
examples:

“He rang up all the friends he had made on the Mediterranean

cruise”

This tendency is due to the necessity to avoid a long gap between

the verb and the adverb.

Although transitivity determines whether a phrasal verb is separable or

not, there are some phrasal verbs that may function both as transitive and
intransitive verbs. Moreover, in some cases, the meaning of the verb
changes according to whether it is used in the transitive or intransitive
form. Let’s see some examples:

“They broke down the door to rescue the child” > transitive, meaning
“destroy”
“When her baby died, she broke down” > intransitive, meaning “collapse,
lose control of one’s emotions”.

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 3. PREPOSITIONAL VERBS

A prepositional verb consists of a lexical verb plus a preposition to which it

is semantically and syntactically associated. The main characteristic of
prepositional verbs is that their two elements are inseparable, in other
words, unlike phrasal verbs the particle in prepositional verbs must occur
immediately after the lexical verb. Let’s see some examples:

“She looks after her niece at the weekends.” > (*) “She looks her niece
after at the weekends”

Bearing in mind their semantic and syntactical unity, they are easy to
distinguish from combinations of verbs + prepositional phrase. To illustrate
this point let’s compare the meaning of the following pairs of sentences:

 “The boy ran into the street” > Both verb and preposition have
their ordinary meaning, the prepositional phrase “into the street”
indicates direction
“The boy ran into an old friend yesterday” > meaning “he met by
accident”, and the preposition into is clearly attached
semantically and syntactically to the lexical verb.

From a syntactic point of view, prepositional verbs are usually followed by

a noun phrase which is called prepositional object, a term that suggests an
analogy with the term direct object. There are several arguments to
support the analysis of the noun phrase as a prepositional object:

1) First, the prepositional phrase can be replaced by a lexical transitive

verb, let’s compare the following sentences:
“She looked at the pictures suspiciously” > “She examined the pictures
suspiciously”
“The police are looking into the matter” > “The police are studying the
matter”

2) Secondly, we can make questions eliciting the prepositional object by

means of the question-words “Who, Whom, or What”, let’s use the above-
mentioned examples to illustrate this:
“She looked at the pictures suspiciously” > “What did she look at
suspiciously?”

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“The police are looking into the matter” > “What are the police looking
into?”
3) In third place, prepositional verbs taking an object can be put into the
passive voice:
“The pictures were looked at suspiciously”
“The matter is being looked into”

4) Finally, coordination between two prepositional objects is also possible:

“She looked at the pictures and at them suspiciously”
“The police are looking into the fraud and also into the murder case”

To sum up, there is a kind of transitive relationship between the

prepositional verbs and their objects similar to that between lexical verbs
and their direct objects. However, unlike direct objects, many prepositional
objects admit an adverb between the verb and the preposition as we can
observe in these examples:

“She looked suspiciously at the pictures”

“The police are looking carefully into the matter”

Despite the idiomatic character of prepositional verbs, there is a wide list

of verbs semantically transparent but because of their syntactic
dependence upon a preposition can be regarded as multiword verbs included
in this prepositional verbs category. Some of them are:

Agree with Insist on

Ask for Invest in
Blame of Remind of
Cope with Wait for
Deal with Want to
Depend on

Some of these verbs syntactically dependent on a particular preposition are

ditransitive, that is to say, they may take two noun phrases normally
separated by the preposition, as we can see in the following examples:

Protect from > “This clothing will protect you from the worst weather”
Thank for > “Paul thanked us for the present”
Remind of > “May I remind you of our agreement?”
Provide with > “They have provided the child with a good education”

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Invest in > “The company has invested several millions of dollars in new
equipments”
Deprive of > “They deprived civilians of food and clothing”
The first noun phrase is the direct object and the second one the
prepositional object. The direct object becomes the subject in the
corresponding passive equivalent, as in:

“They have provided the child with a good education” > “The child has been
provided with a good education”
“The company has invested several millions of dollars in new equipments” >
“Several millions of dollars have been invested in new equipments”

4. PHRASAL-PREPOSITIONAL VERBS

This is the last type of multiword verbs to be analysed. They are the result
of a combination of a lexical verb + an adverb + a preposition. As the
other two types of multiword verbs they are semantically opaque and they
form a grammatical unit.
Some of them are referred as highly idiomatic expressions and categorise
as informal English.
Syntactically speaking there are two types of phrasal-prepositional verbs:

1. Inseparable phrasal-prepositional verbs > They are usually followed

by a prepositional object, as in:
“We are looking forward to your party” (meaning to think of a future
event with pleasure.
“He had to put up with a lot of teasing at school” (meaning to
tolerate or accept)
“I look in on my grandparents each weekend” (meaning to visit)
“He thinks he can get away with everything” (meaning to escape the
consequences of)

Inseparable phrasal-prepositional verbs may occur in their passive form,

though liable to sound awkward. The following examples, however, are all
normal and acceptable:

“This behaviour can’t be put up with any longer” (meaning “Tolerated”)

“Death penalty has been recently done away with” (meaning “Abolished”)

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Other examples of inseparable phrasal-prepositional verbs are:

Go in for (be interested in)

Stand up for (to support)
Look down on (to scorn)
Run out of (To exhaust)
Do away with (to eliminate)
Lie down on (to evade)

2. Ditransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs . They require two objects,

the first one is the direct object and goes between the lexical verb
and the two particles, and the second one is the prepositional object.
Let’s have a look at some examples:
“Don’t take your anger out on me!” (meaning to vent your anger or
frustration on a person or object)
“They put their success down to hard work” (meaning to attribute)
“I’ll let you in on a little secret” (meaning to allow someone to know
about or participate in something)

In some cases the active direct object can easily be made a passive subject
as in:
“They put their success down to hard work” > “Their success was put down
to hard work”

5.TEACHING MULTIWORD VERBS

There are several reasons why multiword verbs, and in particular phrasal
and prepositional verbs, are very difficult both to teach and learn. To sum
up, the study of phrasal verbs become primarily a problem of vocabulary,
and although an analysis of what exactly constitutes a phrasal or
prepositional verb may help English teachers to understand them better, it
is of little use for students to distinguish between phrasal and
prepositional verbs. What is important is here is to look for the appropriate
activities to make multiword verbs an essential part of the students’ active
vocabulary. Most teaching materials present random lists of multiword

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verbs that learners have to memorize and, later, practice in meaningless
exercises. Although some of these lists have been designed according to
adverbial or prepositional particles, for example “up” > give up, look up, get
up, ring up, do up, hold up, take up, and so on, the problem, however, is that
they are presented without a relevant context so they fail to stimulate
learners’ interest and moreover they fail to account for the communicative
use of the language. In order to reinforce memory and sustain the learners’
interest, students need a meaningful contextual background with which
they can associate the target verbal items.
One practical solution when teaching multi-word verbs lies in having
learners deduce the meanings of phrasal and prepositional verbs as they
appear in reading passages. The teacher selects a passage which contains a
number of relevant multiword verbs and which suits the current level of
the students. Learners are asked to identify all the multiword verbs
contained in the reading and make a guess about their meanings based on
the surrounding linguistic context in which the verbs appear. Although
these are just some teaching suggestions, further research is needed to
provide teachers with a theoretical basis that can help us to design more
effective activities concerning multiword verbs.

6.CONCLUSION

The aim of this topic has been to offer an accurate analysis of the
multiword verbs types with especial emphasis on the distinction between
phrasal and prepositional verbs. Multiword verbs are perceived as one of
the most frustrating areas of the English language when it comes to teach
or learn them. Moreover, the productivity of the two-word verb in English,
the appearance of new combinations or new meanings to the existing ones,
or even the disappearance of some phrasal or prepositional verbs from
active use, are further difficulties that English teachers may encounter
when trying to tackle them in class.
Despite their problematic there is a persistent desire to learn phrasal and
prepositional verbs and to incorporate them accurately into everyday verbal
and written interchange, may be because the use of multiword verbs makes
the difference between knowing and mastering the English language. On
that basis, we, as English teachers, should make an effort towards the use
of more communicative activities and tasks so that on the one hand, the
students can realise the importance of multiword verbs to become a fluent
speaker of English.

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 7.BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik, A Grammar of Contemporary

English, Longman, London, 1972
 Palmer, F.R. The English Verb, Longman, London, 1988
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