Filologiya məsələləri, №5, 2021 azərbaycan miLLİ elmlər akademiyasi

particle which adds aspect to the verb, while retaining the core meaning of the 
original verb (
4
Machonis, 2009, p. 253). For example, Machonis identifies the aspect 
added by the particle up as completion, intensity, direction, or a combination of those 
three. Machonis argues that because certain phrasal verbs are “frozen” they are 
different from “compositional” verbs; however, once a phrasal verb is in usage, its 
compositionality changes and the meaning moves, sometimes quite swiftly, towards 
the metaphoric, rather than the literal. A compositional verb can eventually become a 
‘frozen’ verb, or it can remain productive. Jackendoff comments on this: “Some 
combinations of verb + particles are productive, some are semi-productive, and some 
are purely idiosyncratic”. However, Jackendoff does not elaborate on whether or not 
productivity in a phrasal verb depends on its being what Machonis calls 
“compositional.” While the historical development of phrasal verbs is important to 
understanding the phenomenon, the end result is, of course, how the phrasal verbs 
are used at this point in time. Their current usage is better explained if we address 
their semantics. Turning to the semantics of the phrasal verbs, this section contains 
some description and discussion of the semantics involved in both the verbs and the 
particles. Many of the root verbs for phrasal verbs are monosyllabic, and are 
frequently verbs of motion, affect, giving, being, or doing (
5
Dixon, 1992; McArthur, 
1992). One root verb can be used with more than one particle, forming many phrasal 
verbs (e.g., get up, get out, get off, get on). While the type of verb root which phrasal 
verbs are drawn from is typically limited to a few semantic classes, the phrasal verbs 
themselves are not nearly so limited. Dixon writes that “the resulting phrasal verbs 
are distributed over a wider range of types; some of them have quite abstract and 
specialized meanings, for which there is no monomorphemic synonym.
A few examples listed below show that there are a number of common 
phrasal verbs whose parent verbs are Germanic in origin. Examples (16), (17), and 
(18), however, show that parent verbs for phrasal verbs are not limited to Germanic 
roots. The etymologies shown come from Pearsall (2002).
(11) bring about, bring along, bring back (Germanic root, Old English 
bringan
)
(12) draw back, draw out (Germanic root, Old English 
dragan
)
(13) break off (Germanic root, Old English 
brecan
)
(14) go out, go up (Germanic root, Old English 
gan
)
(15) take on, take out, take in (Germanic root, Old English 
tacan
, from Old 
Norse 
taka
)
(16) point out, point to (non-Germanic root, Old French 
pointer
)
(17) carry on (non-Germanic root, Anglo-Norman French and Old North 
French 
carier
, from Latin 
carrus
). 
(18) attend to (non-Germanic root, Old French 
atendre
from Latin 
attendere
)
The particles which form phrasal verbs are homophonous with the English 
class of prepositions (although not all English prepositions double as particles). 

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Usually the particles are based on prepositions of location and direction. According 
to the Corpus of Contemporary American English [COCA], as of September 2012, 
the ten most frequently used particles were
up, out, back, down, on, in, off, over, 
around, and about, with up
having occurrences in the corpus, and about having 
occurrences. The corpus lists a total of English particles, while Machonis, citing 
Fraser, states that there are a total of fifteen particles in English. These drastically 
different numbers, fifteen versus ninety-seven, occur partly because Davies does not 
limit his definition of ‘particle’ to those which only occur with phrasal verbs, and 
partly because Fraser was working with a smaller set of data than Davies. In addition 
to this, phrasal verbs are currently very productive constructions, particularly in 
American English, as stated earlier, and there were simply more phrasal verbs in use 
in 2008 than there would have been in 1976.
Examples of the use of the ten particles listed above would include 
hold up, 
back out, draw back, put down, carry on, turn in, take off, carry over, go around
, and 
bring about
. Some of these include both so-called idiomatic meanings (
they held up 
the bank
) and meanings in keeping with the root verb (
she held up the card
). 
Phrasal verbs are treated morphologically in much the same way as single-
word verbs in English, with suffixes inflecting the verb for third person singular, past 
tense, or for progressive or perfective participles. The ‘verb’ part of the phrasal 
verb—the first word, which was 18 originally a separate verb—is the part which 
receives any inflection. If the original verb was irregular, it follows the same pattern 
of inflection as that irregular verb. For other instances of tense or aspect, the verbs 
are used in the same way as other English verbs, with tense and aspect indicated 
through auxiliary words. In examples (19) to (28), the verbs, phrasal and non-
phrasal, are marked in bold, so as to highlight the changes in morphology for the 
reader.
(19) You 
try on
the shoes.
(20) He 
tries on
the shoes.
(21) I am 
trying on 
the shoes.
(22) He 
tried on
the shoes.
(23) He 
tries
the whiskey.
(24) I will 
try
the whiskey.
(25) I 
crossed
the street.
(26) I 
crossed out
the misspelled word. 
(27) While chewing gum, I 
blew
a bubble.
(28) The construction worker 
blew up
the condemned building. 
As can be seen in (19), the phrasal verb is zero-marked, which is typical of 
the second-person singular simple present in English, but in (20), try on is inflected 
to ‘tries on’ in keeping with the norm for the third-person singular simple present of 
to try. In the above examples, the parent verb for the phrasal verb is the same as the 
single-word verb; in each set, the verbs share the same inflection. The “verb” portion 

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60
of phrasal verbs follows the same morphological patterns as other English verbs; it is 
homophonous with the parent verb, but due to the presence of its particle, it no 
longer has the same meaning. 
While the case for phrasal verb status may at times be murkier with 
intransitive verbs, this problem of phrasal verb status is also a question which affects 
the assignment of transitivity to some phrasal verbs. Because the particles within the 
constructions are largely homophonous with the class of English prepositions, a 
following noun phrase can potentially be assigned the role of the object of a 
prepositional phrase, or the role of the object of the verb. This ambiguity means that 
some phrasal verbs are of indeterminate status regarding transitivity. 
Intransitive phrasal verbs, despite their orthographic treatment as two separate 
words, essentially function as single-word verbs, as shown below, and are therefore 
of less interest in this study. In examples (29) to (33), intransitive phrasal verbs are 
marked in bold to show that the verb can occur followed by either a prepositional 
phrase or no complement at all. 
(29) I went over to the other side of the street.
(30) She lay down on the couch.
(31) The noise let up.
(32) Don’t wait up!
(33) It’ll work out. 
The above examples follow the pattern established in the discussion of the 
morphology of phrasal verbs: the verb of the Verb-Particle construction is, like non-
phrasal verbs, inflected for tense, number, person, or aspect. Auxiliary verbs are also 
used to convey tense and aspect. If the parent verb was irregular, the phrasal verb is 
also irregular. However, these phrasal verbs exhibit the same syntactic behaviour as 
single-word verbs: 
(34) Don’t wait up!
(35) Don’t steal!
(36) I went over to Joe’s place.
(37) I walked to Joe’s place.
(38) The noise let up.
(39) The noise abated. 
The only syntactic difference shown here is the orthographic multi-word 
status of the phrasal verbs. Interestingly, intransitive phrasal verbs are quite similar 
to those phrasal verbs with multiple particles; there is no ‘movement’ of the particle, 
and the words are used as a unit, semantically and syntactically, despite being 
depicted as separate entities in the orthography. However, the particle is not so 
integrated into the verbal unit that it can receive morphological inflections: those 
markers appear only on the verb. Those phrasal verbs which are considered transitive 
non-separable verbs are significant because they are referred to as transitive (Master, 
1996), despite the evidence for questioning whether or not they are actually 

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transitive. In appearance, transitive non-separable phrasal verbs could simply be 
intransitive verbs followed by a prepositional phrase. However, they are often 
interpreted as phrasal verbs because the verb and particle are more semantically 
connected than the particle and the following noun phrase. For example, in (40), ‘in’ 
does not refer solely to the location of ‘in the car’ but also to the action of ‘getting 
in.’ In (41), the particle ‘across’ adds an additional semantic nuance to the verb ‘run.’ 
In both cases, the verb means something quite different when it does not occur with 
the particle. 
(40) He got in the car.
(41) I ran across an old friend at the store. 
References
1. Curzan, Anne & Adams, Michael. (2006). How English works: a linguistic 
introduction. New York: Pearson Longman. 
2. McArthur, Tom, ed. (1992). The Oxford companion to the English 
language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
3. Newmeyer, Frederick J. (2005). Possible and probable languages: A 
generative perspective on linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
4. Machonis, Peter A. (2009). Compositional phrasal verbs with up: 
Direction, aspect, intensity. Lingvisticæ Investigationes 32:2, 253–264. 
5. Dixon, R. M. W. (1992). A new approach to English grammar, on semantic 
principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
SEVINC MƏMMƏDOVA
FRAZEOLOJI INGILIS DILININ BIR HISSƏSI KIMI
XÜLASƏ
Məqalə frazeoloji fellər, onların semantik və morfoloji quruluşu, təsirli və 
təsirsiz növləri haqqında geniş məlumat verir.
Frazeoloji fellər çox sözlü fellərin ən çox yayılmış növlərindən birini təşkil 
edir. Bunlar bir leksik feldən və bir söz önündən ibarətdir və bu birləşmə tez-tez fel 
və hissəciklərdən fərqli bir yeni məna gətirdiyindən, ingilis dilinin xarici tələbələr 
tərəfindən öyrənilməsi ümumiyyətlə çətin olur. Bu fellər hər iki komponentinin 
mənalarının qorunub saxlanıldığı fel və sərbəst birləşmələr ilə qarışdırılmamalıdır. 
Bu anlaşılmazlığın qarşısını almaq üçün, frazeoloji felləri sərbəst sintaktik 
birləşmələrdən ayırmağa kömək edən bir sıra xüsusiyyətlər təqdim olunur ki, bunlar 
da məqalədə göstərilmişdir, çünki frazeoloji fellər təsirsiz və ya təsirli olmağına görə 
dəyişirlər. Frazeoloji felləri öyrənmək çox vacibdir, çünki onlar ingilis dilində orta və 
yüksək səviyyədə danışığın arasındakı fərqi qeyd edirlər. Frazeoloji fellər tələbələr 
tərəfindən çətin mənimsənilir, çünki aralarında heç bir məntiqi əlaqə olmadan bu 

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62
felləri ehtiva edən uzun siyahıları öyrənmək onlar üçün asan deyil. Bunun üçün 
tələbələr ingilis dilində danışanların ümumiyyətlə mücərrəd şeylər (e.g. intentions, 
feelings, attitudes) haqqında danışdıqlarını, konkret cisimlər ifadə etməklə necə 
danışdıqlarını və bundan sonra tətbiq edə biləcəklərini bilməlidirlər.
Açar sözlər
: frazeoloji fellər, birləşmə, ingilis dili, hissəcik, ayrılan, 
ayrılmayan, təsirli, təsirsiz 
Севиндж Маммадова
Фразовые глаголы как часть английского языка 
Резюме 
Фразовые глаголы образуют один из наиболее распространенных типов 
глаголов из нескольких слов. Они состоят из лексического глагола и 
пространственного наречия, и поскольку эта комбинация часто приносит новое 
значение, отличное от значений глагола и частицы, обычно это самая трудная