Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

Predicative and Non-Predicative Particles: Remarks On The Syntax Of Modern English Phrasal Verbs

Abstract: This talk presents work from a paper recently accepted (with minor revisions) in Transactions of the Philological Society. It explores a fundamental distinction between two types of Modern English particle verb combinations. A particle is argued to function either predicatively (lift the bucket up) or non-predicatively (pick the children up). The distinction is justified with reference to the literature and a battery of linguistic tests. Diagnostic contexts include alternation with primary predication, dislocation, coordination and restitutive modification. The dichotomy is compared to related semantic distinctions. A syntactic model, formalised in Lexical Functional Grammar, is developed to capture the difference. The model is capable of parsing both particle types and of explaining their distinct behaviour in most of the identified diagnostic contexts.