Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Péter Antonyi: Phrasal verbs: an attempt at a syntactic account

What supports the claim that the particle here may not be a PP but 'only'a P, if we want the V' reanalysis to work? There is some theoretical opposition to presuming that a lexical category (even if reanalysed from a V') may contain a phrase (maximal projection) as its constituent, although Larson's V' reanalysis in (9b), for instance, also results in a V that contains a phrase category (PP) (Larson 1988: The reanalysis in this case is only possible if the PP does not have a premodifier or a complement (NP), that is, if the PP consists of a P only. One could easily argue that in this case, it is just a P and not a PP, a position that has some justification (see previous paragraph) but if we accept it, we will be faced with an even more crucial theoretical problem: Why do the two sentences require a different syntactic category for the particle when the phrasal verbs in them are believed to be identical (or at least very closely related semantically)? It is for this reason that I take the position that the particle must be a PP, even when non-separated (i.e. when the V'—>V reanalysis is available) and I will suggest a possible 348). 102