Phrasal verbs: The English verb-particle construction and its history by Stefan Thim (review)

Is the phrasal verb a distinctly English feature that arose at a certain stage in the history of the language and belongs to the colloquial register? In this insightful work, Stefan Thim debunks these ‘myths’. The book is a critical examination of the literature, both synchronic and diachronic, on the topic of the phrasal verb (PV) in English (e.g. carry out, use up, get by). It is not an empirical study of the phenomenon (though T summarizes several short studies of PVs that he has undertaken). The book’s major contribution to an understanding of the history of the PV is T’s contention that a Germanic system of preverbs led to both prefixed verbs and verb-particle combinations (phrasal or particle verbs) and that it was large-scale changes in word order, not movement of the particle, that led ‘towards almost exceptionless postposition of the particles’ (5).

After a brief introductory chapter, Ch. 2 (10–73) sets the groundwork for the diachronic study that follows. It discusses the PV in present-day English and other Germanic languages. T begins by proposing an elegant—although perhaps ultimately somewhat simplified—three-way semantic distinction (or cline) between ‘compositional’ PVs, where the particle may be either directional or aspectual in meaning, and ‘noncompositional’ PVs. T argues that although aspectual particles do not express spatial meaning, the resulting PVs are semantically transparent. He insists on the importance of including compositional forms in any discussion of PVs because they provide ‘the diachronic input to the development of aspectual and idiomatic meanings’ (21) and are the only forms that exhibit all of the syntactic behaviors characteristic of PVs. In a comparative section, T argues that PVs of the three semantic types occur in the present-day Germanic languages, though differing positions of the particles are connected to the basic word order of each language; the ‘striking’ similarities ‘point to their shared historical origins’ (46). T places PVs within the realm of word formation, not phraseology, considering them cases of ‘periphrastic word formation’ belonging to the class of complex predicates. That is, PVs are not free syntactic combinations of verbs and particles but are compounds (of verb plus spatial particle) or derivations (of verb plus aspectual particle); noncompositional PVs are ‘lexicalized complex construction[s]’ (65). Further justification for the concept of ‘periphrastic word formation’ and greater consideration of the literature on collocations might have been useful here.

Ch. 3 (74–116) provides the core diachronic argument of the book. T begins with arguments for the existence of preverbs in non-Indo-European and Indo-European languages. Preverbs result from the decategorialization of adverbs in preverb position. In an object-verb language such as Germanic, univerbation of some preverb plus verb syntagms yields prefixed verbs, resulting in a synchronic layering of older prefixed verbs and newer preverb-verb combinations. (In other cases, adverbs may be decategorialized as adpositions, a topic not pursued here.) A densely argued discussion of the complexities of Old English word order—one of the ‘most hotly contested area[s] of English historical syntax’ (90)—ensues; it makes for a rather difficult reading for the uninitiated. T argues that preverbs become postpositions because of the general change from OV to VO order, consisting of movement of the verb in the following sequence (see figure 3-2).

1. 1. original order:  O prt V v (prt = particle, v = finite verb, V = nonfinite verb)

   clause brace:  v O prt V

   exbraciation:  v V O prt / extraposition of object: v V prt O

The patterns of particle verb placement identified by Risto Hiltunen (1983) in his groundbreaking work thus find explanation. In conclusion, ‘what appears to be a positional change of the particle (from “pre” to “postposition”, etc.) on closer inspection turns out to be a set of positional changes of the elements of the verb phrase and of the postpositional trends observable in objects’ (103...