One of the great advantages of this List (and particularly if one has the
intellectual courage to state what one knows about grammar with the
attendant possibility of being proven to be wrong and the even worse
possibility of realising that one has been teaching something to students
which is possibly incorrect) is the potential it has to make one re-examine
one's own assumptions about some point of grammar.

Herb's comments on the complexities of phrasal verbs and Bill's list of
three examples are cases in point.  This query, then, is just to clarify
things in their posts and particularly in the context of ESL.

Bill's list of three is as follows:

I looked [up the chimney] prepositional phrase
I [looked up] the word phrasal verb
I looked [up] adverbial particle.

Just to avoid ambiguity, I would modify the second two as follows:

I [looked up] the word.    As 'up' is an adverbial particle and as 'the
word' is the direct object of the resultant phrasal verb, 'look up' is a 
transitive phrasal
verb.

I looked [up].  As 'up' is an adverbial particle and as there is no direct
object, 'look up' is an intransitive phrasal verb.

Would Bill agree with this modification?

Herb's list of seven really puts the cat amonst the pigeons of my 
assumptions about transitivity.  Here's Bill's list:

1.  intransitive phrasal verbs, e.g. "give in" (surrender)
2.  transitive phrasal verbs, e.g. "find" something "out" (discover)
3.  monotransitive prepositional verbs, e.g. "look after" (take care of)
4.  doubly transitive prepositional verbs, e.g. "blame" something "on"
someone
5.  copular prepositional verbs, e.g. "serve as"
6.  monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs, e.g. "look up to"
(respect)
7.  doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs, e.g. "put" something
"down to" (attribute to)

My problem is with 3  This is the first time that I have encountered the 
term 'monotransitive' so perhaps Bill can explain the significance of the 
addition of 'mono-'.

In the case of 3, why is Bill implicitly differentiating 'look at' and 'look 
after'?   I ask this because I am assuming that he is not claiming that 
'look at' is a monotransitive prepositional verb.  In the case of ESL, I 
think it preferable to consider them both intransitive in order not to muddy 
the transitive waters too much.

6 & 7 are also problematic in ESL terms for the same reason but perhaps we 
can come to those later.

Ron Sheen

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