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Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp. 14-37 | |
Abbreviation: KASELL | |
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online) | |
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. | |
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 |
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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