Particle Verbs in English: Syntax, Information Structure and Intonation (review)

This book, an expanded and reworked version of Nicole Dehé’s 2001 dissertation, analyzes the syntax of transitive particle verbs (PVs) in English. D observes that PVs can occur with either continuous (I gave up my job) or discontinuous (I gave my job up) word order, and analyzes factors that govern which of these word orders is adopted in a given context. Through an impressive survey of the data and two speech-production experiments, D motivates the claim that the continuous word order is the unmarked order, and goes on to propose a syntactic analysis of PVs which uses information-structure theory to capture the effects of word-order variation.

The book consists of six chapters. Ch. 1 (1–14) presents a basic overview of the data and existing PV classifications. Ch. 2 (15–74) outlines and extensively critiques proposed syntactic analyses of PVs, drawing particularly on modification, coordination, and nominalization data in identifying shortcomings in the different approaches. Ch. 3 (75–102) reviews syntactic factors that have been suggested as affecting PV word order, notably the category of the direct object, length/syntactic complexity of the direct object, and particle modification. Ch. 4 (103–207) introduces information-structure theory and topiccomment structure, and details their relevance to the determination of PV word order. D then presents two speech-production experiments, in which information-structure theory is shown to be a reliable predictor of PV stress and word order. Ch. 5 (209–78) details D’s proposed analysis of PVs, which encodes D’s claim that the continuous word order is basic, and derives the discontinuous word order from it based on interaction with information structure, avoiding arbitrary ‘rearrangement’-type movement in doing so. The proposed analysis is extensively tested over examples cited in the PV literature, and information structure is shown to be a powerful holistic predictor of PV word order.

The book is well written and provides a one-stop shop for those interested in PVs, reviewing a broad section of the literature and also covering the phonological, syntactic, and focus/information aspects of PVs. It assumes a high level of familiarity with the minimalist program, but through data-intensive argumentation remains accessible to those lacking this background knowledge.

D touches upon but fails to reach a definite conclusion about the syntax-semantics interface. D dismisses claims that existing classifications of semantic compositionality can be used to predict word order, but at the same time acknowledges that compositionality appears to have an impact on the determination of word order with some PVs. Given the interaction with word-order effects, the book would have benefited from a developed discourse on the precise nature of the syntax-semantics interface and its implications for D’s information-theoretic analysis of PVs.

This minor reservation aside, the book is characterized by clear argumentation, an extensive bibliography, and excellent use of examples, and is a valuable contribution to the PV literature.