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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.14-37
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 19 Nov 2022 Revised 16 Jan 2023 Accepted 28 Jan 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202301.14

Particle-Verb Idioms in English: A Symmetric Analysis

Hyun Kyoung Jung
Associate Professor, Dept. of English Language Education, Silla University hkjung@silla.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper investigates particle-verb constructions in English with focus on particle-verb idioms—idioms consisting of a particle-verb and a DP. Particle-verb idioms are classified into three subtypes according to the placement of the particle relative to the verb. First, there is a group of idioms that require the merged order of the verb and particle (e.g., blow off steam / *blow steam off). Another must appear in the split order (e.g., let the side down / *let down the side). The final group allows alternation between the two surface orders (e.g., keep up one’s end / keep one’s end up). Based on the finding that the flexibility in idiom interpretation is correlated with the amount of verbal structure associated (Punske and Stone 2014, Stone 2016), I argue against the derivational approach to the particle-verb construction. According to the derivational analyses, the merged and split order of particle-verbs share an underlying structure. Such an approach incorrectly predicts only two of the three groups of particle-verb idioms to be possible. I argue that a symmetrical treatment of the two surface orders of particle-verbs enables us to comprehensively account for the idiom facts. In particular, I propose that the merged and split order of particle-verbs involve two different syntactic structures. The two surface orders arise depending on whether the verbal root head-adjoins to the Part(icle) head or the verbalizing v head. The three groups of idioms realize either or both of the proposed structures. In addition to capturing the patterns of particle-verb idioms, I demonstrate that a number of traditional observations about the construction naturally follow. The analysis is shown to be robust in explaining the semantic contrast between the two surface orders, non-idiomatic particle-verbs with a fixed order, right-modification, and particle-verbs with an augmented argument structure.

Keywords:

particle-verb idioms, particle-verb constructions, idioms, idiom flexibility, argument structure

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this study was presented at the 2021 Fall Conference of the New Korean Association of English Language and Literature. I am deeply thankful to anonymous KJELL reviewers, whose comments improved this paper greatly, and the audience of the NKAELL conference for helpful feedback.

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