The definition of prepositional verbs given by Quirk et al. (1985:1155) is: “A
prepositional verb consists of a lexical verb followed by a preposition with which it is
semantically and/or syntactically associated”. A prepositional verb such as the one in
“care for the parties” is taken syntactically as a verb care, with a preposition for,
followed by the complement of the preposition the parties. “Care for”, would not,
like a PV, be regarded as a unified verb unit with a direct object “the parties” (Quirk
et al., 1985:1156).
It is always difficult to differentiate ‘prepositional verbs’ and PVs (Claridge,
2000:47), especially transitive PVs, because they look very similar. An additional
confusing point is that some prepositional verbs can have idiomatic meanings and act
like one verb unit, for example instances such as look after = tended, go into =
investigated (Quirk et al., 1985:1156), whose idiomatic nature is liable to be muddled
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Many linguists have endeavoured to distinguish between PVs and prepositional
verbs. Quirk et al. (1985:1156) propose a test which consisted of moving the particle
to the position after the noun phrase, because a true preposition in a preposition verb
will not allow such movement (Rule 1). For example:
She called on her friends. *She called her friends on. (prepositional verb)
She switched on the light. She switch the light on. (phrasal verb)
Quirk et al. (1985:1167) also give more rules to distinguish PVs and
prepositional verbs, such as: (2) A pronoun is put before the particle in a PV but after
the particle in a prepositional verb; (3) An adverb can be inserted between the verb
and the particle in a prepositional verb but not in a PV; (4) The particle of a PV never
occurs before a relative pronoun but is possible for a prepositional verb (e.g. *The
man up whom they called. The man on whom they called.); (5) The particle of a PV
also never occurs before a wh-question, but the particle of a prepositional verb does
(e.g. *Up which man did they call? On which man did they call?); (6) The particle of
a PV normally receives the stress. Similar tests like these, set up to distinguish PVs
and prepositional verbs or to define PVs, can also be found in many other studies:
details can be seen in Bolinger (1971), Fraser (1974, 1977), Darwin and Gray (1999),
31 tests will be reviewed at length in Section 2.5.2.3.
Although these tests are able to separate PVs and prepositional verbs in most
cases, there are exceptions and ambiguities. An example is put up, pointed out by
Bolinger (1971:119). Compare:
He put up a good fight. (a show of resistance, a good argument)
*He put a good fight up.
In these two sentences, put up may be taken as a prepositional verb because of
Rule 1 that a prepositional verb forbids reversal of the particle and the NP but a PV
allows it (for more examples, see Lam, 2003:82). It is more reasonable to take it as a
PV because it is idiomatic/opaque and the particle cannot be repeated as in: *He put
up a good fight, and up a good argument. Quirk et al. (1985:1157) also acknowledge
some special cases which worsen the confusion between PVs and prepositional verbs.
An instance like turn on can be a PV (= excite someone) and prepositional verb
(=attack someone). In such a case the meaning is changed, but in another case like run
over, the meaning is similar, as in The car ran him over. (PV) The car ran over him.
(prepositional verb), where run over can also act as both types of verb. These
homographs exacerbate the difficulties in differentiating PVs from prepositional
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Another extra problem in isolating prepositional verbs is the common
construction ‘verb + preposition’ which has the identical form to a prepositional verb.
Consider the example He stayed at the corner, in which the preposition at is part of
the prepositional phrase at the corner, but is not associated with the verb stayed. Such
kind of constructions should not be examined in the data of this thesis, because the
preposition does not form a unit with the verb and associate with the verb directly.
Quirk et al. (1985:1163-1164) provide some ways in which to isolate the common
‘verb + preposition’ constructions from prepositional verbs. The preposition of a
prepositional verb can be fronted (e.g. He called on her. On whom did he call?; He
called before lunch. *Before when did he call?), and an adverb can be inserted
between the verb and the preposition (e.g. He called unexpectedly on her), also a
prepositional verb can be passive (e.g. She was called on. *Lunch was called before.).
Although so far we have seen that some scholars such as Quirk et al. (1985) and
Claridge (2000) advocate the separation of PVs and prepositional verbs, some other
researchers have opted to fuse these two types of verb. Cornell (1985:279) includes
both prepositional verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs (see Section 2.3.3) in his
discussion of PVs. Likewise, according to the English Grammar (Sinclair, 2004a), the
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The particles can serve three functions: (1) as an adverb, e.g. sit down (2) as a
preposition, e.g. look after (3) the verb can also be followed by both an adverb and a
preposition, e.g. look forward to. These researchers agree on including prepositional
verbs in PVs.
Some other scholars appear to have an inconsistency in their position. As
mentioned earlier, Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999:265) consider PVs to
have a particle which can behave like a preposition, an adverb or some combination
of the two. Such a view seems to allow PVs to have a prepositional particle: they
include look into (ibid.:265) and come across in their examples of PVs.
Controversially, they suggested distinguishing PVs and prepositional verbs (ibid.:
268). The two aforementioned examples, look into and come across should be
classified as prepositional verbs according to their rules, which are similar to those in
Quirk et al. (1985:1167), and Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999:269).
However, they are taken as phrasal verbs earlier in their book, as we have seen.