Shifting
A confusing aspect of phrasal verbs concerns the distinction between prepositional phrasal verbs and particle phrasal verbs that are transitive, as discussed and illustrated above. Particle phrasal verbs that are transitive allow some variability in word order depending on the relative weight of the constituents involved. Shifting often occurs when the object is very light, e.g.
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- a. Fred chatted up the girl with red hair.
- b. Fred chatted her up.
- c. ?Fred chatted the girl with red hair up.
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- a. They dropped off the kids from the war zone.
- b. They dropped them off.
- c. ?They dropped the kids from the war zone off.
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- a. Mary made up a really entertaining story.
- b. Mary made it up.
- c. ?Mary made a really entertaining story up.
Shifting occurs between two (or more) sister constituents that appear on the same side of their head. The lighter constituent shifts leftward and the heavier constituent shifts rightward, and this happens in order to accommodate the relative weight of the two. Dependency grammar trees are again used to illustrate the point:
The trees illustrate when shifting can occur. English sentence structures that grow down and to the right are easier to process. There is a consistent tendency to place heavier constituents to the right, as is evident in the a-trees. Shifting is possible when the resulting structure does not contradict this tendency, as is evident in the b-trees. Note again that the particle verb constructions (in orange) qualify as catenae in both the a- and b-trees. Shifting does not alter this fact.
Read more about this topic: Phrasal Verb
Famous quotes containing the word shifting:
“One of the People! Born to be
Their curious epitome;
To share yet rise above
Their shifting hate and love.”
—Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903)
“Men are only too clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)