Phrasal verbs

They were to buy a new house.

1. They called off the deal.
2. Thet called the deal off.
Which is the correct one?
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 3.You can put down an animal.
4. You can put an animal down.

I know for sure both 3 and 4 are correct because the object is a pronoun

Rex wrote:

1. They called off the deal. 2. Thet called the deal off. 3.You can put down an animal. 4. You can put an animal down. I know for sure both 3 and 4 are correct because the object is a pronoun

If the object were a  pronoun, you could not use structures 1 and 3. Even with separable phrasal verb, pronouns are always in the middle. 

1. They called off it.
2. They called it off.
3. You can put down it.
4. You can put it down.

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S

Rex,
I think you meant to say that the object (an animal) is not a pronoun.
The pronoun would be it.

You can put down it is incorrect.
You can put it down is correct.

The reason is that if the object is a pronoun, the pronoun must come between the two parts of the phrasal verb.

(All are correct as you wrote them.)

CJ

How to generalize?

In the intransitive case there's no choice about placement of the object because there is no object.
In the transitive case there are three correct ways to structure the words.

pick up the pencil; pick the pencil up; pick it up
throw out the trash; throw the trash out; throw it out

Basically, the intransitives are inseparable and are prepositional verbs; the transitives are separable and are true phrasal verbs.

You might be interested in this. Post:256515

Note in particular:

There are a number of particles (up, down, in, out, on, off, away, back) which should make us very suspicious that we are dealing with a separable phrasal verb, and a number of them (with, without, by, for, at, across, of, from, to, into) which almost certainly indicate a prepositional verb.

CJ