Subject: sum : particle movement

dear linguist listers , about a month ago i posted a query regarding literature on ' particle movement ' in english or , to be more precise , literature on factors contributing to the position of the particle in transitive phrasal-verb constructions such as ( 1 ) a . john brought back the book . b . john brought the book back . in the beginning , i 'd like to thank very much all of those who responded and shared their knowledge with me . apart from some very valuable hints i even received offers to send me unpublished papers or to share the up to now unpublished results of recent research concerning the topic in question . additionally , some answers were suggestions concerning methodological matters or exceptions from the rules generally cited . now that i have managed to mail my answers to all of them individually ( my sincere apologies to those who had had to wait unexpectedly long for their answers ) i want to post the summary of all those who contributed to my research followed by their suggestions or references ( in alphabetical order ) : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - aarts , bas ( b . aarts @ ucl . ak . uk ) : dear stefan gries , regarding your query on linguist , you may want to have a look at a paper of mine in the journal of linguistics , 25 . 2 , 1989 , 277-290 : ` verb - preposition constructions and small clauses in english ' ( and references cited there ) . this article also appears in modified form in my book _ small clauses in english : the nonverbal types _ . new york and berlin : mouton de gruyter . 1992 . hope this is helpful . bas aarts cameron , richard ( rcameron @ uic . edu ) for an article which investigates " the factors contributing to the position of the particle " , see : kroch , anthony and cathy small . 1978 . grammatical ideology and its effect on speech . in david sankoff ( ed . ) linguistic variation : models and methods . new york : academic press . pp . 45-55 . good luck . richard cameron durham . linguistics @ durham . ac . uk ( durham linguistics ) you might like to look at : johnson , k . 1991 . object positions . _ natural language and linguistic theory _ 9 : 577-636 . fischer , susan ( currently : fischer @ sal . tohoku . ac . jp ) i did my 1971 - 2 mit dissertation on the acquisition of verb-particle constructions as well as double-object constructions in english . i do not have a copy of my dissertation ( the acquisition of verb - particle and dative constructions ) with me here on sabbatical , but the main point of the structure chapter was that unstressed pronoun direct objects are cliticized to the verb - - so you must say " i gave it up " rather than " i gave up it " . however , if the pronoun has inherent or contrastive stress , the particle can intervene between the verb and the object : " ok i gave up that a long time ago " , " i gave up him , he did n't give up me . " good luck with your work . susan fischer foster , joseph f . ( joseph . foster @ uc . edu ) mr . gries , re your query on linguist re bring np back and structures of that ilk , i believe chomsky actually used this as one of his examples motivating transformations in syntactic structures . nelson francis also did in his structure of american english which was basically an immediate constituent analysis a la rulon wells . my chief reason for returning your signal however is to let you know if you do n't already ( as your signal suggests you may not ) that there is certainly a dialect of english in which the particle must always follow a pronoun direct object . thus your ( 2 ) b * * * john picked up him . is never grammatical in my english ( i speak natively ozark english but am fluent in standard southern american and pretty fair in midwestern . ) even if the him be contrastively stressed , it can never follow the particle . on the other hand , your 1 a and b are both ok . joe foster fraser , bruce ( bfraser @ bu . edu ) if you get any answers to your query , i would appreciate learning of the article . good luck . bruce fraser hagstrom ( hagstrom @ scf . usc . edu ) try hawkins ' " performance theory of order and constituency " cambridge university press 1994 for a processing approach to word order . cynthia hawkins , john ( hawkins @ almaak . usc . edu ) hi stefan : i saw your question on the linguist list re particle positioning . i have quite a bit of discussion on the ordering of verb , particle and np in my 1994 book a performance theory of order and constituency , cup , pp . 180-182 , and also some textual data . in the meantime i have collected a whole bunch more data , and have examined the constituent structure of v-np - part sequences in greater detail , and have found ordering evidence for two quite distinct structures here : one i analyze as a predication structure in which the part is semantically a predication ( e . g . lift the child up = the child is up ) ; one in which it is not and which i analyze as a discontinuous verb-particle structure ( look the number up does not equal the number is up ) . the proposed constituency difference predicts different orderings in conjunction with the basic ordering principle of my book ( early immediate constituents ) . i have n't got this stuff written up yet , but i ' ll be happy to share it with you when i have . best wishes , john hawkins kemmer , suzanne e . ( kemmer @ ruf . rice . edu ) i ' m happy to hear you ' re going to work on english particles . i do n't have any references to give you , only a suggestion : the generative work on particles was not very empirical , and never actually looked at the distribution of the verb adjacent vs . the postnominal particle . the distribution is highly lexically governed . ( for example , i have many times heard ' look over it ' instead of ' look it over ' , although all the generative literature assumes only ' look it over ' , because of the pronoun . the fact is , ' look over ' is coalescing into a single unit that overrides the pronoun-first preference . ) so , my suggestion is , get yourself a concordance program and actually look at large samples of english . it 's true , it will be written data ( unless you have a spoken corpus ) , and as such more conservative and somewhat less open to the innovations people actually make ; but some real generalizations will emerge . you can search on the various particles ( throwing out the prepositional uses ) and get an idea of which verbs like which particles . ( if you need suggestions on inexpensive concordance programs , let me know ) good luck , suzanne mills , carl ( carl . mills @ uc . edu ) at the 21st forum of the linguistic association of canada and the united states ( lacus ) , i presented a paper entitled " ' obligatory particle movement ' in english , " which is available on pp . 195-204 of the papers from the 21st lacus forum , ed . by mava jo powell . i wrote the paper because i had come across several examples in normal english conversation that violated your starred example : ( 2 ) a . john picked him up . b . * john picked up him . because these were examples that i overheard , some on national public radio , i knew that your stipulation " ( 2b ) is starred unless ' him ' is contrastively stressed " did not hold : the pronoun around which the particle was supposed to have been " moved " was not contrastively stressed . within a matter of days , i overheard three sentences : he wanted to help out them . he went in the house and put down something . can you ring up this ? i added 21 more sentences , some that i made up and some that had been starred in various linguistics publications , and conducted an acceptability judgment survey using a written questionnaire . statistically , the results indicated that speakers accept the sort of rule that underlies your starring of ( 2b ) above , but they do n't always obey the rule . there is more , but you can read the paper for that . good luck . carl mills nathan , geoff ( geoffn @ siu . edu ) dear stefan , a number of years ago we had a student work on this problem , and she wrote a thesis using an early version of cognitive grammar . she finished her thesis , and unfortunately dropped out of linguistics - - i do n't even know where she is now . but i could send you a copy of her thesis if that would be of use to you . best , geoff nathan nolan , brian ( bnolan @ iol . ie ) you may find what you need in the works of talmy , listed below . talmy explores the windowing of attention and the linguistic correlates which pertain to this phenonema . he explains how we can bring to attention , or focus , certain features in a dialogue and how these can manifest themselves linguistically via foregrounding and backgrounding , gapping etc . , etc . talmy 's ( 1996a ) , or his ( 1985 ) work is probably a good place to start talmy , leonard . ( 1996a ) . windowing of attention in language in grammatical constructions , their form and meaning by shibatani & thompson ( publisher ? ) talmy , leonard . ( 1996b ) . fictive motion in language and " ception " : the emanation type , in p . bloom et al ( eds . ) , language and space . mit press . cambridge ma . talmy , leonard . ( 1985 ) . lexicalisation patterns : semantic structure in lexical forms in t . shopen ( ed ) , language typology & syntactic description iii : grammatical categories and the lexicon . cambridge university press . cambridge ma . talmy , leonard . ( 1978 ) . figure and ground in complex sentences , in j . h . greenberg ( ed ) . universals of human language iv : syntax . stanford university press . stanford , california . talmy , leonard . ( 1972 ) . semantic causative types in syntax and semantics no . 6 . academic press . new york . talmy , leonard . ( 1996 ) . semantics and syntax of motion in syntax and semantics no . 4 . academic press . new york . also , the following book is also very , very useful as an intro to the area of cognitive linguistics and may also be of interest to you : ungerer , f . and schmid , h . , j . ( 1996 ) . an introduction to cognitive linguistics . learning about language series . longman . have fun , brian nolan rohrbacher , bernhard ( bernhard @ zora . ling . nwu . edu ) ich nehme an , du bist mit den diversen artikeln von kyle johnson zu diesem thema vertraut . siehe auch mein papier " * english verbs move never " in volume 1 der university of pennsylvania working papers in linguistics . alles gute , bernhard rohrbacher svenonius , peter ( sven @ isl . uit . no ) i can give you a quick rundown of the major syntactic accounts of particle shift . i realize this may not really be what you ' re looking for , but all of the following references do treat the alternation in word order , although not from a functional or cognitive perspective . richard kayne has a 1985 article in which he adopts a " small clause " configuration for the particle construction ( i . e . " the book back " would be a small clause , in your example ) and relates particle shift to heavy np shift ; the particle moves to the right when it is phonologically " heavy " . i adopted the small clause configuration from kayne but criticized the heavy np shift approach to the word order variation in a 1992 article , and proposed a technical syntactic solution for particle shift ( based on the particle " incorporating " into the verb ) . den dikken , in his 1992 dissertation ( later published as den dikken 1995 ) agreed with my rejection of kayne 's analysis but tendered some accurate criticism of my approach , and offered a different syntatic analysis , which also adopts the small clause structure but which in which shift is characterized as np movement across the particle for case reasons . in my 1994 dissertation , i accept den dikken 's criticism of my 1992 analysis but show some evidence that the base structure he assumes is incorrect . i propose another syntactic account based on two alternative movements ; either the particle moves or the np moves . in later work i have developed this approach and extended it to the scandinavian languages . i have one article published in 1996 in working papers in scandinavian syntax and a longer one that has n't been published anywhere ( yet ! ) . i also have a review of den dikken 's book published in the journal language . two additional recent references are johnson 's 1991 ( ? ) article in natural language and linguistic theory , in which the verb plus particle start out as a constituent , and the verb moves from the particle ( as in most analyses of german and dutch ) , and collins & thrainsson 's 1996 linguistic inquiry article , in which the particle first moves up to attach to the verb , as in my 1992 article , and then the verb moves away , as in johnson . all of the above works deal to some extent with the basic pattern of shift , which is that pronouns precede the particle and modified particles ( and particles with complements ) follow the noun phrase - - with greater or lesser degrees of success . for example , pronouns are often considered to have special properties with respect to case , and this has been exploited in several of the above works . in my dissertation , i speculate somewhat inconclusively that the special positioning of pronouns may be due to their prosodic lightness , and i expand on that possibility in the wpss article , where i show that destressed nps are best before the particle , while stressed nps are better after the particle , e . g . ( 1 ) how with the girls get here ? a . i ' ll pick the girls up b . * i ' ll pick up the girls c . i ' ll pick up the girls ( 2 ) who will you pick up ? a . i ' ll pick up the girls b . * i ' ll pick the girls up c . i ' ll pick the girls up in each case , the ( a ) example is best , because the natural right-edge pitch increase coincides with an element that is not old information . the ( b ) examples are bad because salient old information should not be stressed . the ( c ) examples are acceptable , because sentence stress does n't fall on the old information , but are less good than the ( a ) examples , because the stress has been shifted away from the right edge of the sentence . in the article i provide a technical formal account of this fact . the same kind of account might extend to the pronouns and modified particles , but some more work is needed , since examples with particle before pronoun or modified particle after np are worse than the ( c ) examples above , even with stress shift to the left . however , the fact that stress on a pronoun ( or coordination of pronouns , which also makes them phonologically heavy ) allow it to follow the particle suggests a prosodic account . i realize this has been rather breezy , but it 's because i do n't know how much of it really is of interest to you . if you me to expand on something , just ask . if you want more complete references , or if you would like me to send any of my own papers , i 'd be happy to oblige . best , peter svenonius - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - again , thanks very much to all of you stefan th . gries
