Phrasal Verbs

To the Teacher
The inspiration for Phrasal Verbs came about when a student asked me for a
textbook to help her learn the meanings of common English verbs. The only
textbook focusing on common verbs that I could give her taught the decidedly
uncommon verbs arise, awake, and seek but made no mention of their much more
common phrasal equivalents get up, wake up, and look for.
What Are Phrasal Verbs?
Phrasal verbs are an essential part of spoken and written English at all levels. No
ESL student can afford to overlook them, yet many ESL students (and their
teachers) do. Studies have shown that ESL students’ knowledge of and use of
phrasal verbs often lag behind their overall level of fluency and vocabulary
acquisition. This can be ascribed, I believe, to two factors—their idiomatic nature
(discussed below) and the false notion among some instructors that phrasal verbs
are “informal.” Some are informal, of course, but in this regard they are no
different from single-word verbs—the majority are perfectly acceptable and
frequently used at all registers. It is a mistake to give ESL students—especially
those learning English for use in academia or business—the false impression that
phrasal verbs are inherently informal and are therefore to be avoided in formal
discourse.
It is important to understand that phrasal verbs are verbs, not idiomatic
curiosities. There is no logic to classifying take over with take the bull by the
horns. It is also important to understand that these verb + element constructions
are verbs in their own right. Take off, for example, is not a variation of take. It is
an entirely separate verb from take.
So what are phrasal verbs? As we will see, there is no universally agreed-upon
definition. What follows is what I prefer, but I will discuss alternative schools of
thought. As I see it, phrasal verb is the popular term often used for what are more
accurately called multiword verbs. Phrasal verbs are a type of multiword verb.
Multiword Verbs
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Multiword verbs consist of a verb and one or two additional elements. These
elements are sometimes prepositional adverbs (also known as adverbial
prepositions) and sometimes prepositions. They can be broken down into three
broad categories—phrasal verbs, phrasal prepositional verbs, and prepositional
verbs—with additional subcategories.
Phrasal Verbs
Phrasal verbs consist of a verb and a particle. A particle is a word that functions
in other contexts as a preposition or an adverb, but not when part of a phrasal
verb. Whether a particle is an adverb, a preposition, or both is something that I
don’t advise discussing with students. In phrasal verbs, they are neither. They are