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Anonymous Posted 17 years ago
Grammar

Phrasal verb

Hi there,

I would like to know how to analyze the following sentence with the phrasal verb 'look up'

'The boy looked it (i.e. the word) up in the dictionary'

NP: The boy
VP: ? looked (V) - it (NP) - up (Preposition) - in the dictionary (PP)

Is that correct, or does 'up' become its own Prepositional Phrase within the Verb phrase?

Thanks a lot!!!
  

Top answer

I look at the whole question in a rather simplistic way. look up is, as you say, a phrasal verb (I call them 2-word verbs). The fact that the object pronoun comes between the two parts makes no difference.

— Philip

  • I look at the whole question in a rather simplistic way.
  • look up is, as you say, a phrasal verb (I call them 2-word verbs).
  • The fact that the object pronoun comes between the two parts makes no difference.
  • It is still a phrasal verb with no grammatical designation given to the up when the words are separated by the pronoun.
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6 Answers
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I look at the whole question in a rather simplistic way. look up is, as you say, a phrasal verb (I call them 2-word verbs). The fact that the object pronoun comes between the two parts makes no difference. It is still a phrasal verb with no grammatical designation given to the up when the words are separated by the pronoun.
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Thanks Philip,

but, if you had to draw a tree diagram on this, would 'up' go right up to the VP or
would 'up' become a Prepositional Phrase?

Since the pronoun separates the verb, there should be some way to make sure that the
preposition belongs to the verb.
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On a linear diagram, I would put 'it' after the \ and both parts of the verb in the normal place. You might want to put part of it in a bracket look [up] \ it [the line here is perpendicular to the base line, not at an angle] to indicate that you know what you are doing.
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AnonymousIs that correct, or does 'up' become its own Prepositional Phrase within the Verb phrase?
It may depend on the details of the system of analysis you are following. I'm inclined to go with Radford and have 'up' become a PP in that context.

Radford, in Transformational Grammar (Cambridge University Press, 1988), does the phrasal verbs l
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Thanks Calif, that's what I was looking for.

I went through the mentioned book by Radford and could not find the respective explanation.

Thanks a lot!!!!!
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Anonymouscould not find the respective explanation.
Hmm. That's strange. See page 100, example 163, and look back at example 125, as the author suggests, for the comparison. Briefly, as I understood it in a quick reread, the difference has to do with where modifiers can go -- none are grammatical before the P if the P comes directly after the V, but some ar
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