Action nominalization

Like the placement of the particle, adverb insertion, fronting, passivisation and stress, action nominalization constructions can also serve to distinguish particle combinations from some but not all verb-preposition combinations. Lees (1963: 22), Fairclough (1965: 16), Bolinger (1971: 8) and Fraser (1976: 3) present pairs of sentences showing that of in an action nominalization can appear between a particle and a following noun, but not between a preposition and a following noun.

The following example is Bolinger’s (1971: 8):

(64) a. He looked up the information. (His looking up of the information)

b. He looked into the information. (*His looking into of the information)

Bolinger (1971: 8) notes, however, that it is a useful test for culling out pure prepositions, but with adpreps it yields contradictory results. Thus it would appear that to run up the hill and to walk across the bridge are parallel in every respect, yet the latter does not allow nominalization:

(65) a. The running up of the hill was a matter of minutes.

b. *The walking across of the bridge was a matter of minutes.

Bolinger maintains that whether or not a verb-particle combination or verb-preposition combination can occur in an action nominalization is

expressed. If the action can be topicalized, and is thought of as something that “gets done to” the noun object, then an action nominalization should be possible. We can topicalize the running up of hills because it is something that ‘gets done to’ the hill, while we do not think of walking across as an action that ‘gets done to’ bridges.

Fraser (1976: 3) observes that verb-particle combinations do not permit the particle to be placed after the direct object in action nominalization:

(66) a. His throwing up of his dinner was stupid.

b. *His throwing of his dinner up was stupid.

c. His throwing up of the ball was stupid.

d.*His throwing of the ball up was stupid.

As has been pointed out by some scholars, for example by Bolinger (1971); Quirk et al. (1985); Dixon (1982) and Palmer (1988) in the above analysis, these tests are not absolute, and sometimes it is difficult to draw a borderline between phrasal verbs (verb + adverb constructions) and prepositional verbs (verb + preposition constructions). It has become therefore essential that we find the proper theoretical framework for their analysis, which will be discussed in details later in Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Overall, the discussion above has been restricted to the identification of phrasal verbs in a narrower sense and their comparison with prepositional verbs. To make things even more complicated, the more or less reliable rules about the order of the verb and adverbial particle in relation to the object do not seem to apply in certain phrasal verbs, either. To explore this aspect of verb + adverb constructions, in the next chapter I will focus on the factors that can influence the placement of particles in phrasal verbs used in a narrower sense.

5. POSITION OF THE PARTICLE RELATIVE TO THE DIRECT OBJECT IN TRANSITIVE VERB+

ADVERB CONSTRUCTIONS

As was evident from the analysis in Chapter 4, word order is one of the most important criteria to distinguish combinations which constitute transitive verb + adverbial particle combinations from those which constitute verb + preposition combinations. In the literature on multi-word verbs, it has generally been pointed out that if the verb + particle combination is transitive, the particle can either precede or follow the noun phrase object, whereas in the verb + preposition combination the preposition always precedes the noun phrase object. However, if the object is a pronoun, it must go between the verb and the adverb in separable phrasal verbs, such as in (1a). In the case of prepositional verbs the preposition always precedes the pronoun object as well, such as in (1b):

(1) a. Just pack your bags and load up the car.

I’ll load the car up while you lock the door.

You bring the car round and I’ll load it up.

b. I bumped into my mother in the supermarket.

*I bumped my mother into.

I bumped into her in the city centre.

As far as the position of the object relative to the particle in transitive verb + adverb constructions is concerned, the patterns V+N+A, V+A+N, V+PRON+A, however, do not seem to be hard and fast rules (cf. Palmer 1988: 220-223 and Quirk et al. 1985: 1155). On the one hand, with a few transitive phrasal verbs, the object must go between the verb and the particle, whether it is a noun, a noun phrase or a pronoun.

(2) I can hardly tell the two women apart.

*I could hardly tell apart the two women.

The two women are so similar to each other that only their husbands can tell them apart.

On the other hand, with some transitive phrasal verbs, just like with prepositional verbs, the object must go after the particle, whether it is a noun, a noun phrase or a pronoun, for example:

(3) The victim wasn’t able to put up much resistance.

We’re expected to believe that hardened criminals such as Thomas can turn over a new leaf.

The most common examples some linguists mentioned above (cf. e.g.

Palmer 1988: 220 and Quirk et al. 1985: 1155) are as follows:

(4) a. The car picked up speed. *The car picked speed up.

b. She gave up hope. *She gave hope up.

c. She gave up trying. *She gave trying up.

c. They laid down their arms. *They laid their arms down.

(5) a. She cried her eyes out. *She cried out her eyes.

b. She laughed her head off. *She laughed off her head.

It is noteworthy that in some of the above examples, i.e. pick up and give up the adverb may also occur after the noun, but with a different sense:

(6)

We picked up a hitchhiker/the phone.

We picked a hitchhiker/the phone up.

He gave up his job/his weekend.

She gave his job/his weekend up.

The question that can arise here is the following: What are the factors that influence the choice of one word order over another, i.e. SVOA or SVAO? Numerous factors have been proposed to account for the distribution of joined (verb + adverbial + object) vs. split (verb + object + adverbial) word order in English phrasal verbs (cf. Kennedy 1920, Bolinger 1971, Lipka 1972, Fraser 1976, Palmer 1988, Quirk et al. 1985, Chen 1986, Gries 1999, 2002, Jackendoff 1997, 2002, Hawkins 2000, 2004 and Lohse et al. 2004), etc.

These factors are mainly syntactic or semantic ones, but phonological and pragmatic factors should also be considered. The primary aim of this chapter is to highlight these factors. General contemporary descriptions of English grammar books and course books focus exclusively on syntactic factors, which certainly affect ordering in verb + particle constructions.

Nevertheless, they are not the only ones.