On Verb-Plus-Particle Constructions in English

Abstract

This paper argues that Korean EFL learners avoid or underproduce English phrasal verbs due to their ignorance of them. Their ignorance culminates in figurative phrasal verbs in the spirit of Dagut and Laufer (1985), since their meaning is not easily predicted from their individual elements, the verb and the adverb. This is exhibited in the survey among Korean EFL learners, in which figurative phrasal verbs are apparently underproduced. I attribute this to the fact that most EFL learners are ignorant of English phrasal verbs, which are out of their vocabulary range, but not to the structural difference between their L1 and L2. The ignorance of phrasal verbs consequently leads them to use their equivalent one-word verbs. Native speakers, on the other hand, are seen to employ phrasal verbs freely in their casual speech, whether they are literal, completive, or figurative, as exemplified in the survey of this paper. Given that phrasal verbs are used more often in informal and colloquial language and that they are a very important part of everyday English (Hart, 2009), it is indispensible for the Korean EFL learners to master them for their personal communication with native speakers of English. Understanding syntactic and semantic properties of phrasal verbs in contrast with prepositional verbs is an essential part of mastering the so-called verb-plus-particle constructions in English.