10. ON FUZZINESS
10.2 Continuum between literal and idiomatic
I have found Dixon (1982: 9) to be among the first linguists who observe that there are no clear-cut criteria for distinguishing phrasal verbs from literal verb-preposition constructions. He suggests that there is a continuum, with the more idiomatic and idiosyncratic combinations at one extreme, and entirely literal combinations at the other. Dixon recognises five levels within the continuum:
A) Literal combinations where the meaning of a sentence can be fully inferred from the meanings of the words and their grammatical relations, and where no deletion is possible, e.g.
John walked on the grass.
B) Like A, but with the possibility of deleting some part of the prepositional phrase, the deleted position being generally understood from the context, or socio-cultural knowledge, e.g.
She put the rubbish out (of the building).
C) Constructions which could scarcely be regarded as literal but which involve an obvious metaphorical extension from a literal phrase, e.g.
John pulled a $ 10,000 loan in (cf. The snail pulled its horns in).
The firm went under (cf. The drowning man went under (the surface of the water).
D) Non-literal constructions which cannot transparently be related to any literal combination, e.g.
They are going to have it out (~ talk honestly and directly about sth they do not agree about).
She couldn’t put up with him (~ tolerate).
E) Full idioms
e.g. lay down the law, put on a good face, turn over a new leaf and kick over the traces, etc.
Dixon (1982) uses the term ‘phrasal verb’ to cover C and D and calls them ‘mildly’ and ‘strongly‘ phrasal verbs, respectively.
As Dixon (1982) notes, there is a semantic continuum: as one descends the scale, so meaning becomes - very gradually - increasingly idiosyncratic and non-predictable from the literal meanings of the components words.
Literal constructions, A and B, show no semantic peculiarities. In contrast, D and E involve multi-word lexical items. C falls part-way between B and D - the meanings of some of these combinations may be inferable from the semantic descriptions of individual words if they indicate directions of metaphorical extension.
As far as the syntactic properties are concerned, Dixon (1982: 11) assumes that C and D, by and large, follow the regular syntactic rules of the language, just like A and B. This, however, contrasts strongly with the full idioms, in E; all of these show some degree of syntactic rigidity.
Dixon argues that there is just one major syntactic difference between the literal verb-preposition combinations, in B and mildly phrasal verbs, in C.
For any literal clause that ends with a preposition, a final noun phrase could be supplied. Thus He took his hat off we could add his head - if he had taken his hat off anything else (e.g. the coat peg or someone else’s head). A noun phrase can always be added; it will explicitly specify something that the speaker could otherwise have expected the addressee to be able to infer and it does not change the meaning the sentence has within that particular context. The noun phrase can also be omitted if this can unequivocally be supplied by the intended addressees on the basis of information in the surrounding text, or from the context of situation, or from general socio-cultural knowledge or expectation. Thus Take the kettle off would be understood as ‘off the heating device’.
Once the noun phrase it governs has been deleted, a local preposition can usually be moved to the left of a preceding direct object noun phrase, provided this noun phrase does not have a personal pronoun as its head.
Again, there will be no difference in meaning: compare Take off the kettle and Take the kettle off.
In contrast to the above literal constructions, there are many true phrasal verbs that have a clause-final particle to which no noun phrase can be added, e.g. He took John off (imitated).
As pointed out in chapter 5, the more idiomatic a verb + particle construction, the more syntactic rigidity is has, and especially the fully idiomatic combinations do not allow the movement of the object at all.
Consider the following examples:
The government was throwing down a gauntlet to the BBC (~ to invite someone to compete or fight with them).
He’ll turn on the waterworks, but don’t be persuaded (~ to start crying, esp. in order to get one’s sympathy).
In some instances, especially in the case of over and through the movement of the particle to the right of its NP object is highly restricted. We can, however, find a limited number of cases where a particle can move to the right of its NP object, and then there is a difference in meaning.
Consider run over in the following examples (cf. Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2002), Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary for Learners of English (2001), Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus (2005):
In all three dictionaries I have found that run over is a prepositional verb in the following meanings:
− repeat it or read it quickly, in order to practice it or check it (e.g. run over notes, minutes, part (in a play)
Do you want me to run over your lines with you?
Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus (2005) gives two more meanings of run over, in which over is a preposition and cannot move to the left of the NP object, just like in the example above.
− to explain something again so that someone understands Would you run over the sequence of events again?
− to think a lot about sth such as a decision or experience
She keeps running over the incident again and again in her mind.
In contrast, in the meaning ‘knock sb down’ run over has the following patterns V + Adv + N, V + N + Adv, V + Pron+Adv, e.g.
We almost ran over a fox that was crossing the road.
I’m sure he would run us over.
Interestingly enough, in the case of pass over the difference of meaning becomes clear only from the object, e.g.
That’s the third time they passed me over (~ not give someone a better job, choosing instead someone who is younger or who has experience).
They quickly passed over the events of that week (~ deliberately ignore or not mention a problem or subject).
In the first example, over is an adverbial particle that can either precede or follow the object NP, while in the second over is a preposition which cannot precede the object.
Get over behaves syntactically very much like pass over. In the COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2002) I have found that in ‘get over an illness; a problem; an unexpected event’ over being a preposition does not allow the right movement of the noun phrase, while in ‘get an idea, argument, or suggestion over‘ over is an adverb and the order V + Adv + N is also possible.
The Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2001) gives the following possible objects in the different meanings of get over:
− get over a wall, fence; stream, bridge
− get over an obstacle, difficulty, and problem
− get over a shock, disappointment, surprise; handicap, illness, effort, being made redundant
− get over sb’s impudence, madness, bad behaviour; the fact that ...
− get over one’s embarrassment, confusion; shyness, inhibitions
− get over a lot of ground, the distance; mileage,
where get over is in each of them a prepositional verb, i.e. the noun phrase prepositional object can never precede the preposition.
Interestingly enough, according to the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2002) in ‘When it was discovered, the guards painted over it in grey’ over is a preposition, whereas in ‘You saw off the bolt and paint the door over’ over is an adverb although paint over has the literal same meaning, i.e. cover it with paint.
It is also noteworthy that take over a company; a country; a factory; a house can have the patterns: V + Adv + N, V + N + Adv, V + Pron + Adv, whereas in a feeling; thought; an activity takes you over V + N + Adv and V
+ Pron + Adv are possible in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2002).
In other literal or non-literal combinations, however, over cannot move to the right of the noun phrase object, e.g. in stand over /X/, watch over /X/, hang over /X/, where it is a preposition:
I’m fed up with him standing over me while I work.
Soldiers arrived to watch over the city and maintain peace.
A sense of doom hung over the town.
Dixon (1982: 28-29) also gives a number of cases of right movement of through over a prepositional object that directly or indirectly relates to a period of time:
The doctor says he’ll live through the winter.
The doctor says he’ll live the winter through.
He slept through the film.
He slept the film through.
According to Dixon (1982), there are also a few examples of through being moved to the right of a non-temporal prepositional object - She read the letter through and look (human nature) through, but the possibilities are very limited; through cannot move over a noun phrase prepositional object in phrasal verbs such as come through /X/, run through /X/, cut through /X/, or in most literal constructions.
Both in the COBUILD and the OXFORD Dictionary live through has the pattern V + Prep. Read through, however, can have the pattern V + Prep and also V + N + Adv, V + Pron + Adv in the COBUILD Dictionary, e.g. I’ve read through the letter very carefully. Ask the student to read it through first) and only V +N +Adv, V + Pron +Adv in the OXFORD Dictionary. (He read them through again. I never read through these notes.) Look through another person has the pattern V + Prep in both dictionaries.
As Dixon (1982: 11) points out, although the extremes are clear enough, individual judgements concerning where to draw the line between literal combinations and phrasal verbs will vary; we cannot dismiss difficult cases, but must simply recognise that there is a fuzzy area in this part of the continuum.
Overall, Dixon’s analysis basically reflects the traditional approach to phrasal verbs since his major concern is to provide a syntactic analysis of verb-particle constructions with regard to whether the particle can be moved to the left of the object or not. Nevertheless, the novelty of his analysis is
that he goes beyond the dichotomy between the literal and idiomatic meanings and reveals that there is a fuzzy area in this continuum.
Another important thing that emerges from Dixon’s discussion is that especially over and through are rather problematic, both in terms of their syntax and semantics. These particles, together with out, will be dealt with in detail in Chapter 12, 13 and 14, respectively.
11. ANALYSING VERB + PARTICLE
CONSTRUCTIONS IN COGNITIVE GRAMMAR
Whereas traditional linguists (cf. Kennedy 1920; Wood 1955; Bolinger 1971 and Fraser 1976) have assumed that verb-particle combinations are either fully analysable or opaque, and that the particle has either a literal meaning or no meaning at all, cognitive linguists have taken up the challenge of the alleged arbitrariness of prepositional usage, and demonstrated that prepositional usage is highly structured and not arbitrary.
Amongst the outstanding contributions are the dissertations by Brugman (1981), Vandeloise (1984), and Hawkins (1984), as well as shorter treatments by Dirven (1981), Radden (1985) and Hawkins (1988). Their discussions are limited mainly to the spatial meanings of prepositions.
Besides, Lindner (1981) gives a lexico-semantic analysis of English verb-particle constructions with up and out, and Johnson (1987) and Morgan (1997) focus on the analysis of out. Furthermore, Lakoff (1987), Taylor (1989), Dewell (1994) and Tyler and Evans (2003) examine the case of over, while Rudzka-Ostyn (2003) presents a cognitive analysis of out, in, into, up, down, off, way, on, over, back, about, around, across, through, by and along.
In order to understand this new approach to the semantics of verb + particle constructions, it seems to be appropriate to introduce some terms that commonly occur in cognitive analyses, such as prototypical meanings of particles, trajector-landmark relation and metaphors.