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Anonymous Posted 10 years ago
Grammar
'Give up' really separable?
I'm an EFL teacher, Literature graduate and published journalist (so I would like to think reasonable user of English), finally really sitting down to make sure I fully understand phrasal verb form.
It seemed perfectly intuitive to me until now- I more or less understand the basic rules of separable and inseparable phrasals, but one that stumps me is 'give up':
In theory (and many of the websites I have seen confirm this) 'give up' is separable, as in:
-'give IT up' (correct)
-'I gave up smoking' (correct)
BUT I simply can't accept the fact that 'give smoking up' or 'give teaching English up' are correct uses of the verb. To me that sounds totally wrong. Am I completely mad?
It's the only phrasal I can think of where this seems true, i.e. that using a pronoun sounds fine but using any other nouns sounds wrong...
Any light to be shed on this?
It seemed perfectly intuitive to me until now- I more or less understand the basic rules of separable and inseparable phrasals, but one that stumps me is 'give up':
In theory (and many of the websites I have seen confirm this) 'give up' is separable, as in:
-'give IT up' (correct)
-'I gave up smoking' (correct)
BUT I simply can't accept the fact that 'give smoking up' or 'give teaching English up' are correct uses of the verb. To me that sounds totally wrong. Am I completely mad?
It's the only phrasal I can think of where this seems true, i.e. that using a pronoun sounds fine but using any other nouns sounds wrong...
Any light to be shed on this?
Top answer
Anonymous BUT I simply can't accept the fact that 'give smoking up' or 'give teaching English up' are correct uses of the verb. I agree; the particle (up) must follow the verb (give) directly when the complement is a gerund (teaching, smoking, meeting). " With a noun, it can go either way: The doctor was getting old, but he didn't want to give his practice up.
- Anonymous BUT I simply can't accept the fact that 'give smoking up' or 'give teaching English up' are correct uses of the verb.
- I agree; the particle (up) must follow the verb (give) directly when the complement is a gerund (teaching, smoking, meeting).
- " With a noun, it can go either way: The doctor was getting old, but he didn't want to give his practice up.
- ) The rent got so high that we had to give the apartment up.
- (give up the apartment) With a pronoun, the particle is moved to the position after the pronoun: The suspect gave himself up to the police.
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1 Answers
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AnonymousBUT I simply can't accept the fact that 'give smoking up' or 'give teaching English up' are correct uses of the verb.I agree; the particle (up) must follow the verb (give) directly when the complement is a gerund (teaching, smoking, meeting). It means to cease or stop "verb-ing."
With a noun, it can go either way:
The doctor was gettin
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