Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Éva Kovács: Identification of phrasal verbs in the literature
(V) ppN e.g. take up with ÍXJ, go in for /X/, get on to ÍXJ, scrape by on /X/ (VI) NppN e.g. put /X/down to /Y/, let /.X / in for ÍY/, tie /XJ in with ÍYJ, take /XJ up on /Y/ As we could see above, phrasal verbs are rather problematic for linguists and they have different views on them. Some identify phrasal verbs as a combination of a lexical verb and an adverbial particle, others interpret them in a broader sense and also include verb + preposition constructions. It may seem to be contradictory that the above mentioned up-to-date dictionaries of phrasal verbs (see Oxford, Cobuild, Cambridge Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs) use the term 'phrasal verb' not only for verb + adverbial particle combinations, but also for verb + preposition and verb + adverbial particle + preposition combinations, whereas the latest 1985 edition of Quirk et al.'s Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language regards phrasal verbs only as verb + adverbial particle combinations excluding prepositional verbs. What makes things even more complicated is that some particles, e.g. OVER, OUT, or UP can function as a preposition, an adverbial particle or even as a prefix. It was Dixon (1982) who was the first to realize that we cannot draw a strict borderline between prepositional (verb + preposition combinations) and phrasal verbs (verb + adverbial particle combinations), but there is a fuzzy area between them. My interpretation corresponds to the term of phrasal verbs used in a broader sense, i.e verb + particle combinations, where the particle can be an adverbial particle or a preposition. Whenever I refer to the term phrasal verb in the narrower sense, I always indicate in brackets that the term 'phrasal verb' covers verb + adverbial particle combination only. This is the point where we can raise the question of how we could interpret and analyse them best. My efforts to find the theoretical framework in which phrasal verbs can be interpreted best have led me to cognitive grammar. 3.3 Phrasal verbs in cognitive grammar Cognitive grammarians e.g.: Langacker (1987) and Lakoff (1987) argue that like other conceptual categories, linguistic categories, (in our case prepositions, particles, adverbs and prefixes) are meaningful, and are prototypically structured. Besides, grammatical categories are often grounded on our everyday experience and make use of imaginative processes such as metaphorical mapping. Thus, linguistic categories are complex, and as Langacker (1987:369) notes, "it is not always possible to find a description valid without qualification for all class members and inapplicable to all non-members. Hence it cannot in general be presumed 123
