A syntactico-semantic study of English phrasal verbs

Abstract EN

This paper is an attempt to investigate the syntactic and semantic features of the English phrasal verbs.

In this paper, phrasal verbs were classified into subgroups according to their syntactic and semantic characteristics.

After giving a survey of literature written on the meaning and definition of phrasal verbs, two sections have been devoted to tackle the most important issues in this category of English verbs.

Section one sheds light on the basic definitions of the term ‘phrasal verb’ which are, according to the researcher’s point of view, sufficient to cover the area of the study.

In addition, it studies the number and the importance of phrasal verbs in English.

Section two deals with the syntactic and semantic features of English phrasal verbs.

It shows whether these phrasal verbs are transitive \ intransitive and separable\ inseparable, as well as it focuses on the differences between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs.

Finally, the literal and idiomatic usage of English phrasal verbs has been tackled.

In the light of the findings of the study a number of conclusions are drawn.