The polysemy (?) of phrasal verbs in English

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study into the polysemy of four phrasal verbs in English: “get out”, “give out”, “put on” and “put off'. The aim is to look into the degree of polysemy of those phrasal verbs, and more precisely to see if it is possible to reduce the number of different meanings, as was done to a certain extent for some postpositions (Lindner 1983, for “up” and “out”) and verbs (Lindstromberg 1991, for “get”). The meanings of these phrasal verbs are defined from concordances, then studied with the aim of finding similarities among different meanings of a given phrasal verb. On the basis of these similarities, clusters of meanings are made and assigned more general meanings, which are in turn compared and grouped together. A hierarchy is thus defined for each phrasal verb, with a general meaning on top, from which all or almost all others are obtained. The aim of the article is not to deny the polysemous nature of phrasal verbs. That will depend on the level of detail one takes—other factors enter into consideration, such as collocation, metaphorical extensions etc., which can justify assigning more meanings in lower branches. Finally, implications are then briefly discussed, with regards to the teaching of phrasal verbs to speakers of other languages.