MULTI-WORD EXPRESSIONS Phrasal Verbs, Collocations, Idioms PHRASAL VERB a unit comprised of a verb and an adverb particle, e.g. I have to look after the children. Syntactic aspect transitive v + adv, e.g. Don‘t give the story away, silly! object = pronoun, e.g. He cleaned it up. transitive v + adv + prep., e.g. I‘ll take you up on that generous invitation. Placement of the object - particles can go before or after noun objects (except multi-word objects which go always after the particle). But particles can only go after pronoun objects, e.g. She switched off the light. / She switched the light off. / She switched it off. Inseparable phrasal verbs - the adverb particle cannot be separated from the verb by another sentence element, e.g. carry on with (continue), fall out with (quarrel with), get around (evade, avoid), get in (enter), go on with (continue), go over (review), … Prepositional verbs - base verb + a preposition, e.g. activity verbs (look at, look for, go through, deal with, …), communication verbs (talk to/about, ask for, write to, call for, …), mental verbs (be known as, be seen as, be considered as, …) causative verbs (lead to, come from, result in, …), occurrence verbs (look like, happen to, …), verbs of existence or relationship (depend on, belong to, consist of, differ from, be based on, …) MULTI-WORD EXPRESSIONS Phrasal Verbs, Collocations, Idioms COLLOCATION word combinations meaning is neither transferred, nor non-literal a habitual co-occurrence of lexical items - its relation to the other elements of vocabulary, - its ability to combine with other words (valency), - words can usually be combined (collocated) only with certain words, - words of the language that are most likely to occur together, i.e. typical collocations, e.g. rain, n (+ adj. heavy, pouring, soaking, steady, …) COLLOCATIONS GRAMMATICAL COLLOCATIONS • a phrase: dominant word (n, adj, v) and a preposition or grammatical structure (infinitive or a clause), e.g., decide on (not: at), accuse (sb) of (not: on), … • typical g.c.: verb patterns with infinitive, bare infinitive, -ing form • incorrect g.c. = grammatical mistake LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS • normally do not contain prepositions, infinitives, or clauses • consist of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, e.g., warmest regards not hot/hearty regards • incorrect l.c. = lexical mistake LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS LOVE – noun, verb, adjective adj + n obsessive, genuine, true, everlasting, maternal, … v + n feel, seek, promise, fall in, make, be in, … adv + v dearly, passionately, truly, tenderly, … adj + n affair, letter, song, story, … phrases head over heels in love, love at firt sight, the love of one‘s life, love blossoms at any age, etc. Collocations in the verb phrase DO e.g. the housework, some gardening, the washing up, homework, … MAKE e.g. an agreement, a suggestion, a decision, a cup of tea, war, love, … COME TO e.g. an agreement, a conclusion, an end, a decision, … COME INTO e.g. bloom, flower, a fortune, operation, a sight, view, fashion, use, … PUT e.g. all your eggs in one basket, your mind to, two and two together, … SET e.g. fire to, on fire, foot in, a good example, … IDIOMS - the expression that is a unit of meaning and that is grammatically and lexically fixed/frozen - its meaning cannot be deduced by examining the meanings of the constituent lexemes - foreign language speakers have to be cautious in the usage of idioms due to a seeming similarity - cast (one‘s) pearls before swine – not throw pearls to swines) - see phraseological units above