English Verb-Preposition Constructions: Constituency and Order
2005
This article offers a comprehensive analysis of the constituent-structure and linear-order properties
of English transitive and intransitive V-P constructions involving so-called OparticlesO (turn
on the lights/the lights on, mess up the song/the song up, shut up, sit down, etc.). Drawing on
both standard and certain new evidence and arguments, it is proposed that V-P constructions
generally come in one or both of two varieties: lexical compounds (mess up in mess up the song)
and/or discontinuous verbs, that is, lexemes with more than one piece projected as a word or
phrase (mess . . . up in mess the song up), and that the alternation, for those that have both
manifestations, reflects different argument structure possibilities for a lexemewith the same overall
conceptual semantics. The internal structure of VPs built on V-P lexemes is examined in some
detail. The popular Osmall-clauseO approach, according to which the DP of transitive V-P structures
is the subject of a phrase that has the P as its predicate, is shown to be problematic, primarily
because there in fact exists a true small-clause construction that can have a P as its predicate and
the putative small clause of cases like mess the song up systematically lacks the defining properties
of this construction. The word-order restrictions that the small-clause approach is designed, in
part, to account for are shown to follow from a set of independently needed linearization constraints,
which are motivated by functional principles.
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