Shut up

Question

Is the "up" in shut up an adverb or a PP?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

How could it be a preposition?  It has no object.

Doll · Answer

Hmm, I would completely take it as a verb itself.

Mister Micawber · Answer

No, the particle has an independent existence, Doll. 'Shut' is verb, 'shut up' is phrasal verb (i.e. verb + adverb).

Doll · Answer

Hmm, I remembered a lesson when I was writing it and we categorized phrasal verbs as "verbs" in a sentence initially and then made the discriminations later for example phrasal verb. I was thinking of it when I wrote but I was not clear.  ( At least I should have explained more) I am sorry if I confused anyone. <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

Philip · Answer

I believe that Doll and Mr. M agree that the expression is what I call a two-word verb [others call it a phrasal verb or other things.]  Terminology is not important.

Anonymous · Answer

So, if an adverb, the "up" in "shut the **** up" is emphasising the way the **** should be shut, is it?

Mister Micawber · Answer

Ha, ha!  No.  'Shut up' is the verb; 'the ****' is an intensifier.  'The ****' is emphasing how the 'shut up' should be.

Anonymous · Answer

It's a particle which is part of the verb.

VP

-----------

V particle , a preposition requires a Np after PP

---------

P NP

If you say "shut up your mouth , it will be ungrammatical to say:

* Up your mouth shut. On the other hand if you say I walked up the stairs , yoy can say :

Up the stairs , I walked.

This will indicate the difference betweenparticles and prepositions.

Best of luck

Forbes · Answer

AnonymousOn the other hand if you say I walked up the stairs , yoy can say :

Up the stairs , I walked.

This will indicate the difference betweenparticles and prepositions.

Best of luck

The problem is though that you can say "I walked up". If a definition of a preposition is that it must govern something what is it governing here?

Dawnstorm · Answer

Mister MicawberHow could it be a preposition? It has no object.

Actually, there's a linguistic analysis that allows prepositions to have no complements. The argument runs that "prepositions" exhibit transitivity, like verbs do, so that prepositions without complements are "intranstive prepositions". If you accept this argument, this certainly applies to situations like: "I came here," or "I fell in." ([url=http://web.khu.ac.kr/~jongbok/research/final-papers/preposition.pdf]Pdf-article[/url], summarising some arguments - mostly Emonds and Jackendoff.)

The problem is that "up" in "shut up" is a particle. It looks like an independent word, but you need both components to arrive at the meaning through the lexicon. You cannot guess what "shut" + "up" means from just the meanings of "shut" and "up". This is different from collocations such as "Drink up!" where "drink" means "drink" and "up" means something like "completely"; which is again different from "look up", where "up" has a directional meaning. (But that's - of course - semantics...)

It's actually an interesting question.

Personally, I find the adverb-category unwieldly if we add too many disparate words into the category. And I quite like the "intransitive preposition" analysis, but it does have its problems. I do think, though, that placing these words with the prepositions gives us more insight into how language works.

Shut up

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