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MULTI-WORD VERBS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. PHRASAL VERBS
3. PREPOSITIONAL VERBS
PHRASE COMBINATION
4. PHRASAL-PREPOSITIONAL VERBS:
INSEPARABLE
DITRANSITIVE
6. CONCLUSION
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1. INTRODUCTION
2. PHRASAL VERBS
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Transitive phrasal verbs are peculiar in that they allow their two parts to
be separated. To do so we have to take into consideration the following
rules:
2) The two parts of the phrasal verb must be separated if the direct
object is realised by an unstressed personal pronoun, the pronoun
object must come between the two parts, as in the following example:
3) The two parts of the phrasal verb tend to appear together if followed
by a long nominal group as its direct object, as in the following
examples:
“They broke down the door to rescue the child” > transitive, meaning
“destroy”
“When her baby died, she broke down” > intransitive, meaning “collapse,
lose control of one’s emotions”.
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3. PREPOSITIONAL VERBS
“She looks after her niece at the weekends.” > (*) “She looks her niece
after at the weekends”
Bearing in mind their semantic and syntactical unity, they are easy to
distinguish from combinations of verbs + prepositional phrase. To illustrate
this point let’s compare the meaning of the following pairs of sentences:
“The boy ran into the street” > Both verb and preposition have
their ordinary meaning, the prepositional phrase “into the street”
indicates direction
“The boy ran into an old friend yesterday” > meaning “he met by
accident”, and the preposition into is clearly attached
semantically and syntactically to the lexical verb.
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“The police are looking into the matter” > “What are the police looking
into?”
3) In third place, prepositional verbs taking an object can be put into the
passive voice:
“The pictures were looked at suspiciously”
“The matter is being looked into”
Protect from > “This clothing will protect you from the worst weather”
Thank for > “Paul thanked us for the present”
Remind of > “May I remind you of our agreement?”
Provide with > “They have provided the child with a good education”
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Invest in > “The company has invested several millions of dollars in new
equipments”
Deprive of > “They deprived civilians of food and clothing”
The first noun phrase is the direct object and the second one the
prepositional object. The direct object becomes the subject in the
corresponding passive equivalent, as in:
“They have provided the child with a good education” > “The child has been
provided with a good education”
“The company has invested several millions of dollars in new equipments” >
“Several millions of dollars have been invested in new equipments”
4. PHRASAL-PREPOSITIONAL VERBS
This is the last type of multiword verbs to be analysed. They are the result
of a combination of a lexical verb + an adverb + a preposition. As the
other two types of multiword verbs they are semantically opaque and they
form a grammatical unit.
Some of them are referred as highly idiomatic expressions and categorise
as informal English.
Syntactically speaking there are two types of phrasal-prepositional verbs:
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Other examples of inseparable phrasal-prepositional verbs are:
In some cases the active direct object can easily be made a passive subject
as in:
“They put their success down to hard work” > “Their success was put down
to hard work”
There are several reasons why multiword verbs, and in particular phrasal
and prepositional verbs, are very difficult both to teach and learn. To sum
up, the study of phrasal verbs become primarily a problem of vocabulary,
and although an analysis of what exactly constitutes a phrasal or
prepositional verb may help English teachers to understand them better, it
is of little use for students to distinguish between phrasal and
prepositional verbs. What is important is here is to look for the appropriate
activities to make multiword verbs an essential part of the students’ active
vocabulary. Most teaching materials present random lists of multiword
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verbs that learners have to memorize and, later, practice in meaningless
exercises. Although some of these lists have been designed according to
adverbial or prepositional particles, for example “up” > give up, look up, get
up, ring up, do up, hold up, take up, and so on, the problem, however, is that
they are presented without a relevant context so they fail to stimulate
learners’ interest and moreover they fail to account for the communicative
use of the language. In order to reinforce memory and sustain the learners’
interest, students need a meaningful contextual background with which
they can associate the target verbal items.
One practical solution when teaching multi-word verbs lies in having
learners deduce the meanings of phrasal and prepositional verbs as they
appear in reading passages. The teacher selects a passage which contains a
number of relevant multiword verbs and which suits the current level of
the students. Learners are asked to identify all the multiword verbs
contained in the reading and make a guess about their meanings based on
the surrounding linguistic context in which the verbs appear. Although
these are just some teaching suggestions, further research is needed to
provide teachers with a theoretical basis that can help us to design more
effective activities concerning multiword verbs.
6.CONCLUSION
The aim of this topic has been to offer an accurate analysis of the
multiword verbs types with especial emphasis on the distinction between
phrasal and prepositional verbs. Multiword verbs are perceived as one of
the most frustrating areas of the English language when it comes to teach
or learn them. Moreover, the productivity of the two-word verb in English,
the appearance of new combinations or new meanings to the existing ones,
or even the disappearance of some phrasal or prepositional verbs from
active use, are further difficulties that English teachers may encounter
when trying to tackle them in class.
Despite their problematic there is a persistent desire to learn phrasal and
prepositional verbs and to incorporate them accurately into everyday verbal
and written interchange, may be because the use of multiword verbs makes
the difference between knowing and mastering the English language. On
that basis, we, as English teachers, should make an effort towards the use
of more communicative activities and tasks so that on the one hand, the
students can realise the importance of multiword verbs to become a fluent
speaker of English.
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7.BIBLIOGRAPHY