The English Phrasal Verb, 1650–Present
History, Stylistic Drifts, and Lexicalisation

A fine-grained qualitative and quantitative analysis of phrasal verbs covering almost 400 years, based on large amounts of empirical evidence.

Paula Rodríguez-Puente (Author)

9781107499249, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 October 2021

341 pages, 41 b/w illus. 44 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.502 kg

'This book is a major contribution to the research on phrasal verbs, presenting the most comprehensive empirical investigation to date by tracing more than 12,000 phrasal verbs across 350 years and ten genres. Thus, it provides most valuable insights into their behaviour in spoken versus written, formal versus informal contexts, and their positioning along the clines of lexicalisation and idiomatisation.' Claudia Claridge, Universität Augsburg

Providing a detailed and comprehensive account of the development of phrasal verbs from early modern to present-day English, this study covers almost 400 years in the history of English, and provides both a diachronic and synchronic account based on over 12,000 examples extracted from stratified electronic corpora. The corpus analysis provides evidence of how registers can inform us about the history of English, as it traces and compares the usage and stylistic drifts of phrasal verbs across ten different genres - drama, fiction, journals, diaries, letters, medicine, news, science, sermons, and trial proceedings. The study also sheds new light on the morpho-syntactic and semantic features of phrasal verbs, proposing a new approach to the category, considering not only on their grammatical features, but also their historical development, by discussing the category in terms of a number of central mechanisms of language change.

1. Introduction
2. Corpus and methodology
3. Delimiting the scope of the study: what are phrasal verbs?
4. The relationship between phrasal verbs and the processes of grammaticalisation, lexicalisation, and idiomatisation
5. Phrasal verbs 1650–1990: Linguistic aspects
6. Phrasal verbs 1650–1990: cross-genre distribution
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Language: history & general works [CBX]