Universidad técnica particular de loja la universidad Técnica Particular de Loja

use of phrasal verbs could represent a problem if their 
structure is not well assembled and also if they are incomplete 
(remember that phrasal verbs consist of more than one word). A phrasal 
verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, 

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or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part of 
the syntax of the sentence, and so constitutes a complete semantic unit. 
Phrasal verbs are particularly frequent in the English language. A 
phrasal verb often has a meaning which is different from the original 
verb. 
The wrong usage of phrasal verbs will cause serious damage to 
the meaning of a sentence. Since the words that constitute phrasal 
verbs have different meanings when used separately, when it (the 
phrasal verb) is incomplete, the sentence will have different meaning 
than it was intend to. On the other hand, when written with an incorrect 
structure (word order, etc) it would be strange when read by an English 
native speaker. However, the meaning of the sentence would not be 
affected in a “dangerous” way.
In the following examples taken from our field investigation we will 
see both cases. Many phrasal verbs are not complete (“took out”, “warm 
up”, “look up”, “take over”, “look back”). We will also find some errors 
when it comes to the structure of the phrasal verbs.
- “I asked him if he wanted to go to the beach. Said he had to pick
up her sister before.”
- “On Fridays, I took the garbage of all the trash cans in my house.”
- “I like to wear shirts on the beach. I usually don`t take off them 
when I go to the beach.”

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- “My friends and I went also to the gym. We usually warm for 20 
minutes.”
- “I looked to the sky.”
- “Some people believe that UFOs want to take the world.”
- “They say that they saw the “chupacabras” but there is no picture 
of it because everyone runs out when they see it.”
- “Cinderella took the shoe and she tried on it.”
- “It took down two airplanes.”
- “She ran and ran without looking.”
- “He wanted to be a real boy so he held his desire of lie.”
During our field investigation, we found that errors concerning 
phrasal verbs could have been produced because the writers needed to 
express an idea that can be expressed in their native language (Spanish) 
by using only one of the words which are part of a phrasal verb (usually 
the verb so they leave out the preposition/adverb). If we take into 
account that there is no such thing as “phrasal verbs” in Spanish it can 
also be state that the errors concerning phrasal verbs can be generated 
because of the lack of previous knowledge or the lack of a similar
Spanish structure.

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