ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

CalifJim — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:51:44 GMT

This Post:256204 may or may not be useful, as it is on a similar topic, but not the exact same one.
Check it out, noting later in the same thread:

"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

Re: Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

Grammar Geek — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:13:18 GMT

There's no easy way to know, Anon.

Here's an article from Purdue's OWL.

Re: Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:56:07 GMT

I"m trying to find that out, too! It's really difficult.

Re: Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

rishonly — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 05:03:07 GMT

Thanks for the explanation, Paco2004. My New Year holidays were quit enjoyable, and I personally prefer taking a couple of days off at the beginning of each year. Thanks again for your keen observation and asking.

Re: Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

paco2004 — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 02:25:38 GMT

Hello Krish

How did you spend the New Years holidays? Do you have a custom of taking holidays at the start of a year in Southern India?

By the way, I feel what you are asking for is difficult to answer. I think you already know that most of the transitive phrasal verbs in the form of <verb + adverbial particle> are separable. But the problem is that the same particle functions sometimes as an adverbial and sometimes as a preposition.
         He ran up the hill [up = preposition; run = intransitive; "run it up" is not OK]
         He ran up the flag to the full height [up = adverb; run = transitive; "run it up" is OK]
         He ran up the bill to $3000 [up = adverb; run = transitive; "run it up" is OK ]
In another words, we can know whether the phrasal is separable or not only after we know in what sense it is used.

paco

Re: Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

rishonly — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 01:40:09 GMT

Any help on this?

Separable & Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

rishonly — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 03:36:21 GMT

Hello,

Is there an easy way to figure out if a phrasal verb is separable or inseparable?