Wow, Herb, thanks for pointing that out. In class we actually did kind of
dead end ourselves with that exact issue (why is this ungrammatical?). I
didn't have an answer although I thought it must be governed by some other
level of language. I hadn't considered discourse/prosodic constraints yet. I
can't wait to get back to class with an answer!

John

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 10:14 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>  John,
>
>
>
> I’m glad you found Lester’s book useful.  I’ve used it as a reference
> often, but, with some regret, I’ve never used it as a text, maybe because by
> the time that edition came out I’d stopped using textbooks in my grammar
> classes and started using The Oxford English Grammar with lots of handouts.
>
>
>
> I will add just one comment to your excellent summary.  I learned the
> object pronoun wrinkle a long time ago as you have described it in your last
> bullet.  It was sometime later that I realized that that word order is an
> artifact of discourse pragmatics.  If the DO is a pronoun, it’s generally
> old information and therefore unstressed and reduced.  The result is that it
> can’t carry the tonic accent of the sentence, and so the particle, which you
> note is generally stressed is placed finally to bear that accent.  It’s a
> nice instance of discourse function influencing sentence-level syntax.
>
>
>
> Herb
>
>
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *John Dews-Alexander
> *Sent:* 2009-03-23 20:00
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Phrasal Verb Overview
>
>
>
> Greetings, ATEGers!
>
>
>
> Someone (I believe it was Herb) recently suggested a book to me: Mark
> Lester's (1990) *Grammar in the Classroom*. I'm not sure why I haven't
> discovered this book before, but I quite like it and would suggest it to
> anyone reviewing grammar texts. Even if you can't use it in your classroom,
> you and/or your  students might enjoy knowing about it as a reference text.
> I find Lester's writing to be straightforward and uncluttered. Has anyone
> actually used this as a classroom text for teachers-in-training? If so, I'd
> be interested to hear about your experiences.
>
>
>
> I went to the text specifically to find some more information on phrasal
> verbs, information that wasn't overly technical for non-linguistic students
> but also not overly simplified so as to ignore descriptive facts. I thought
> I'd share here a few of the main points about phrasal verbs that Lester
> includes.
>
>
>
>    - Lester suggests that phrasal verbs are part of Latin and Germanic
>    languages' process of creating new words by adding prepositions (functional
>    words) to verb stems. Latin languages tended to add the preposition to the
>    beginning of the verb stem with Germanic languages adding them to the end.
>    (example, "devour" from "de-" (down) and "voro" (swollow) in Latin)
>    - When English forms a new word by adding a preposition to the
>    beginning of a verb stem (example, "bypass" "offset"), it is more quickly
>    and easily recognized as a new word; people forget that it used to be a
>    phrasal verb/verb +preposition combination because, orthographically, it is
>    written without a space. However, English tends to leave the space when the
>    preposition is added to the end of the verb stem. (example, "give up")
>    - While a sentence like "I give up" may look like a pronoun, a tensed
>    verb, and an adverbial preposition, it is in fact a pronoun and a phrasal
>    verb (note: I always learned to call the preposition that has become
>    attached to a verb in such a way a "particle," but Lester continues to call
>    it a preposition, which doesn't bother me at all). Lester points out a fun
>    test for phrasal verbs -- can you replace the unit with a single word
>    (almost always of Latin origin) and retain the meaning? In this case, "I
>    give up" becomes "I surrender." (Lester points out the irony in the fact
>    that "surrender" was once itself a phrasal verb in Latin!)
>    - Phrasal verbs can be transitive; this can mark the difference between
>    a phrasal verb and a verb+preposition combo even more. For example,
>
>            John turned out the light. (Noun subject+phrasal verb+noun
> phrase object)
>
>           John turned at the light. (Noun subject+verb+adverbial
> prepositional phrase)
>
>
>
>           Say the sentences out loud and notice the stress. In phrasal
> verbs the preposition is stressed while it is not in the PP.
>
>    - Phrasal verbs can have more than one preposition/particle: look down
>    on, talk back to, walk out on, etc.
>    - Lester points out that phrasal verbs were dumped from traditional
>    school grammars because the word "preposition" in Latin literally means "to
>    place before," and it was reasoned that prepositions couldn't be connected
>    to  verbs if they came after them. Sometimes phrasal verbs were treated as
>    idioms.
>    - Structural linguists have noted the difference between separable and
>    inseparable phrasal verbs.Separable phrasal verbs have prepositions that can
>    be moved to a position after the object noun phrase (example, "I gave up the
>    game" vs "I gave the game up" or "I gave it up"). Inseparable phrasal verbs
>    have prepositions that cannot be moved (example, "I depend on the income" vs
>    *"I depend the income on" or *"I depend it on").
>    - As you can see from the above examples, when the object of a
>    separable transitive phrasal verb is a pronoun, the movement of the
>    preposition is obligatory. You would always say "I gave it up" and never *"I
>    gave up it." (I think I would cringe if I heard this avoided with some
>    clunky construction like, "Up it is that I gave it.") In this sense, it is
>    actually *ungrammatical* to NOT end a sentence with a preposition.
>
>  Hope all the grammar nerds enjoy this as much as I did!
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> John Alexander
>
> Austin, Texas
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/