English language Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==== Phrasal verbs ==== English also makes frequent use of constructions traditionally called [[phrasal verb]]s, verb phrases that are made up of a verb root and a preposition or particle that follows the verb. The phrase then functions as a single predicate. In terms of intonation the preposition is fused to the verb, but in writing it is written as a separate word. Examples of phrasal verbs are ''to get up'', ''to ask out'', ''to back up'', ''to give up'', ''to get together'', ''to hang out'', ''to put up with'', etc. The phrasal verb frequently has a highly [[English-language idioms|idiomatic]] meaning that is more specialised and restricted than what can be simply extrapolated from the combination of verb and preposition complement (e.g. ''lay off'' meaning ''terminate someone's employment'').{{sfn|Dixon|1982}} In spite of the idiomatic meaning, some grammarians, including {{harvcoltxt|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=274}}, do not consider this type of construction to form a syntactic constituent and hence refrain from using the term "phrasal verb". Instead, they consider the construction simply to be a verb with a prepositional phrase as its syntactic complement, i.e. ''he woke up in the morning'' and ''he ran up in the mountains'' are syntactically equivalent. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page