LINGUIST List 6.544

Wed 12 Apr 1995

Qs: Phrasal verbs, Interdentalized laterals, Etymologies

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1. , Phrasal verbs, preposition 'for'
2. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Q: Interdentalized laterals?
3. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Q: Etymologies and Comparative Linguistics

Elyse Rukkila [criseydeIMAP2.ASU.EDU], asks if anyone (and specifically
myself) has information on the history of English phrasal verbs.
I'm afraid that I don't have such information. The project that I work
for concerns itself only with contemporary English useage, so there has
been no need for us to undertake a historical analysis. We have indeed
compiled a small corpus of phrasal verbs which are used in the domain
with which we work (heavy equipment.) It has generally fallen to me to
determine whether a particular useage will be classified in our
analysis as a phrasal verb, or as a verb + preposition, or in some
cases as a verb + adverb (e.g. "move up".) Sometimes there is no
clearcut way to make these decisions, so we decide based on
functionality--what is the most *useful* way to classify a particular
term, for our application? (That is the engineering approach.)

There are also other multi-word verbs that are not verb + particle
combinations, which we have identified but have not attempted to
classify beyond grouping them with semantically-similar verbs (verbs of
physical movement, verbs of information manipulation, etc.) These
include terms such as "blow dry", "jump start", "make sure", etc.
These phrasal verbs don't include particles which are identical to
prepositions, so they pose a different sort of ambiguity challenge
for automatic analysis. Like the verb + particle sort of phrasal verb,
they don't lend themselves to ordinary compositional analysis, and we
handle them as idioms.

I hope some other people on this list can provide references pertaining
to the history of English phrasal verbs (the verb + particle variety.)
It would be interesting to see how these useages developed. The
process of creating verb + particle phrasal verbs seems to be a
semi-productive one even today, but I do not know at what point in the
past it was at its height.

--Marion Kee
---------------------
Marion Kee | All opinions are my own;
Knowledge Engineer, Center for Machine Translation | CMU is not responsible
Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, USA | for what I write.

I have observed, beyond any possible doubt, that some speakers
of American English project the tips of their tongues between
their teeth when saying /l/ at least word-initially. I am
going to look at /l/ in other positions soon. I am wondering
if (a) this has been observed by others and (b) whether it has
been discussed in the literature
Alexis Manaster Ramer

I am looking for good examples of a situation where some
language or group is uncontroversially part of a larger
family, and where we know of "internal" etymologies which
seemed plausible before the larger grouping was discovered
but are utterly refuted once we know of the larger grouping,
and etymologies involving the larger grouping which would
seem ludicrous if we only had "internal" evidnce from
the one language or smaller group of languages.

Alexis MR