Home Particle placement in Late Modern English and Twentieth-century English: Morpho-syntactic variables
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Particle placement in Late Modern English and Twentieth-century English: Morpho-syntactic variables

  • Paula Rodríguez-Puente EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 8, 2016
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This article surveys possible factors affecting particle alternation in British English between 1650 and 1990. When particle verbs are transitive, the speaker is presented with two possible choices: verb-particle-object (VPO) or verb-object-particle (VOP). Research has shown that there are a number of phonological, morphological, semantic and discourse-functional variables which may affect the speaker’s choice. The present article focuses on the influence of six morpho-syntactic variables, namely the noun phrase (NP) type of the direct object (DO), the length of the object, the complexity of the DO, the presence of a directional prepositional phrase (PPdir), the type of determiner of the object NP and the type of particle. The data show that, although the VPO order tends to be the predominant one, some of these variables can determine the type of arrangement selected by the speaker. The results are also compared with previous research on Middle English, Early Modern English and Present-day English, showing that the tendencies observed have changed over time.

Funding statement: For generous financial support, thanks are due to the European Regional Development Fund and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grants FFI2014-52188-P and FFI2014-51873-REDT).

References

ARCHER 3.1=A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers 3.1. 1990–1993/2002/2007/2010. Originally compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan at Northern Arizona University and University of Southern California. Modified and expanded by subsequent members of a consortium of universities. Current member universities are Northern Arizona, Southern California, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Uppsala, Michigan, Manchester, Lancaster, Bamberg, Zurich, Trier, Salford, and Santiago de Compostela. Official website: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/ research/projects/archer/Search in Google Scholar

Bolinger, Dwight. 1971. The phrasal verb in English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Cappelle, Bert. 2005. Particle patterns in English: A comprehensive coverage. PhD dissertation, Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven MA thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Cappelle, Bert. 2006. Particle placement and the case for ‘allostructions’. In Doris Schönefeld (ed.), Constructions all over: Case studies and theoretical implications [special issue of the e-journal Constructions]. http://www.constructions-online.de/articles/specvol1/683 (28 November 2013).Search in Google Scholar

Chen, Ping. 1986. Discourse and particle movement in English. Studies in Language 10. 79–95.10.1075/sl.10.1.05cheSearch in Google Scholar

Claridge, Claudia. 2000. Multi-word verbs in early Modern English: A corpus-based study. Amsterdam: Rodopi.10.1163/9789004333840Search in Google Scholar

Cowie, Anthony Paul & Ronald Mackin. 1975. Oxford dictionary of current idiomatic English. Volume I: Verbs with prepositions and particles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Dehé, Nicole. 2002. Particle verbs in English. Syntax, information structure and intonation (Linguistik Aktuell / Linguistics Today 59). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.59Search in Google Scholar

Diessel, Holger & Michael Tomasello. 2005. Particle placement in early child language: A multifactorial analysis. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1(1). 89–111.10.1515/cllt.2005.1.1.89Search in Google Scholar

Dongen, Wilhelmus van. 1919. He puts on his hat and he puts his hat on. Neuphilologus 4. 322–353.10.1007/BF01508864Search in Google Scholar

Downing, Angela & Philip Locke. 1992. A university course in English grammar. London: Prentice Hall.Search in Google Scholar

Elenbaas, Marion. 2013. Motivations for particle verb word order in Middle English and early Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 17(3). 489–511.10.1017/S1360674313000130Search in Google Scholar

Erades, Peter. 1961. Points of modern English syntax XL. English Studies 42. 56–60.10.1080/00138386108597105Search in Google Scholar

Fraser, Bruce. 1976. The verb-particle combination in English. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar

Gries, Stefan Th. 1999. Particle movement: A cognitive and functional approach. Cognitive Linguistics 10. 105–146.10.1515/cogl.1999.005Search in Google Scholar

Gries, Stefan Th. 2003. Multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics: A study of particle placement. London & New York: Continuum Press.Search in Google Scholar

Gries, Stefan Th. 2007. New perspectives in old alternations. In Jonathan E. Cihlar, Amy L. Franklin & David W. Kaiser (eds.), Papers from the 39th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Vol. II. The Panels, 274–292. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistics Society.Search in Google Scholar

Gries, Stefan Th. 2011. Acquiring particle placement in English: A corpus-based perspective. In Pilar Guerrero-Medina (ed.), Morphosyntactic alternations in English: Functional and cognitive perspectives, 235–263. London & Oakville, CT: Equinox.Search in Google Scholar

Haddican, Bill & Daniel Ezra Johnson. 2012. Effects of particle verb alternation across English dialects. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18(2). 31–40.Search in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2. Journal of Linguistics 3. 199–244.10.1017/S0022226700016613Search in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Search in Google Scholar

Hawkins, John A. 1991. Syntactic weight versus information structure in word order variation. In Joachim Jacobs (ed.), Informationsstruktur und Grammatik, 196–220. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.10.1007/978-3-663-12176-3_7Search in Google Scholar

Hawkins, John A. 1994. A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511554285Search in Google Scholar

Kennedy, Arthur Garfield. 1920. The modern English verb-adverb combination. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lohse, Barbara, John A. Hawkins & Thomas Wasow. 2004. Domain minimization in English verb-particle constructions. Language 80(2). 238–261.10.1353/lan.2004.0089Search in Google Scholar

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London & New York: Longman.Search in Google Scholar

Rohrbacher, Bernhard. 1994. English main verbs move never. Penn Review of Linguistics 18. 145–159.Search in Google Scholar

Scott, Michael. 1999. WordSmith tools version 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2016-11-08
Published in Print: 2016-11-01

©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton

Downloaded on 5.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/flih-2016-0005/html
Scroll to top button