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Many phrasal verbs such as look up or knock out typically allow the object to be placed between the verb and proposition or to be placed afterward. For example,

You can look my brother up on Google.
You can look up my brother on Google.
Knock your opponent out!
Knock out your opponent!

However, when the object is a pronoun, this doesn't seem to hold:

You can look me up on Google.
*You can look up me on Google.
Knock him out!
*Knock out him!

Why is there this discrepancy? Is there something syntactically special about pronouns that distinguish them from other noun phrases? Why can they only be placed in the middle of the verb phrase?

Tushar Raj
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Peter Olson
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    Well, you can. By way of advising someone who's about to hit the wrong person, for example - Don't knock out her, you idiot! Knock out him! – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 02:44
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    @FumbleFingers, I'd look at you funny if you said it that way; I'd expect "Don't knock her* out! Knock him out!*" – Hellion Jun 04 '15 at 02:47
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    And there's that song by A-Ha, which tries to have it both ways; "Take on me, take me on..," http://www.metrolyrics.com/take-on-me-lyrics-aha.html – Brian Hitchcock Jun 04 '15 at 07:15
  • MWVs with 'over' seem to offer more choice: Post your letter, and I'll walk with you while we talk over it. _ "Post Haste" by R.M. Ballantyne. // 'Look over_Meaning: Inspect_Example: They came to LOOK the house OVER with a view to buying it. ... [MWV; transitive] Separable [optional]' / there are many examples of 'look over it', eg: if in doubt, get a friend (with proven grammar skills) to look over it [ http://Mildred Talabi ] – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 08:54
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    @EdwinAshworth MWV = multi-word verbs (I had to look that up) Is that expression going to replace "phrasal verbs" in the future? – Mari-Lou A Jun 04 '15 at 09:25
  • You can also look up to somebody, meaning that you admire this person, e.g She looked up to her mother and She looked up to her, but NOT "She looked up her to" nor "She looked her up to" both of which are ungrammatical. – Mari-Lou A Jun 04 '15 at 09:52
  • Related: Are 'creep up' and 'climb up' phrasal verbs?. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 10:15
  • Related: Can any transitive verb be accompanied by a preposition? – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 10:23
  • @Mari-Lou: In my understanding, I'll look him* up in the phone directory* is a "phrasal verb" precisely because the object can be positioned between the verb (look) and the "particle" (up). It doesn't have to be - I can certainly look up John* in the directory* too, but at least that's a possibility. Which you can't do with "non-phrasal-verb" usages, so I can't look the road* up to see if he's coming* (that sense has to be expressed as *look up the road up to see...)* – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 13:57
  • Rather than try to sort out all the commentary, I'll just point to a few discussions of the phenomena: here, and here, and here. All these come from here. – John Lawler Jun 04 '15 at 15:39
  • @Edwin Ashworth: If someone asked me to "look over it", I would think they wanted me to look beyond it, to see something else. (The opposite of "look under it".) The only unambiguous way to say this is "get a friend...to look it over." Perhaps because "look it over" is a set phrase, an idiom. So one does not mess with the word order, lest the idiomatic meaning be lost. – Brian Hitchcock Jun 05 '15 at 11:29
  • By contrast, the idiom "look after" works the opposite way: "Please look after my children," NOT "Please look my children after." – Brian Hitchcock Jun 05 '15 at 11:32
  • 'So one does not mess with the word order, lest the idiomatic meaning be lost.' is prescriptivist. English is usage-driven. 'Look over it' is rarely ambiguous when the context is taken into account. 476 000 Google hits for "look it over for you"; 341 000 hits for "look over it for you". This is the same sort of argument as 'you mustn't use the indicative in "He insists that she uses the old crockery" in place of "He insists that she use the old crockery". But Quirk et al, and Pullum, say that the indicative is a grammatical alternative to the subjunctive here. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 05 '15 at 15:54

1 Answers1

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It's not that you 'can't place pronouns after any phrasal verb'. It only happens with certain ones.

There are two types of phrasal verbs:

  1. prepositional verbs
  2. particle verbs

If the construction is verb + preposition, the object, noun or pronoun can't split the phrasal verb:

  • You should stand by your friend¹
  • You should stand by him

But not

  • *You should stand your friend by.
  • *You should stand him by.

These constructions are wrong because the preposition must come first to introduce the prepositional phrase.

If the construction is verb + particle, the object can split the phrsal verb if it's a noun, and must split it if it's a pronoun

  • You should think over the matter.²

  • You should think the matter over.

  • You should think it over.

  • but not, *You should think over it.

The last construction isn't used because the it causes confusion. Over could be interpreted as a preposition, which it isn't. Since there isn't an NP to disambiguate that it is a matter (and not a table), we place the pronoun before the particle.

EDIT: I should make it clear that you can't put a pronoun after a particle verb.

@Mari suggested that both of these are right but mean different things

  • "He looked me over"
  • "He looked over me"

Both are correct, but only the first one uses the phrasal verb 'look over'. The second sentence doesn't have a phrasal verb, and uses 'look' and 'over' in their normal senses. The construct has a valid meaning in this case, but it might not be so in case of every particle verb.

Essentialy, if you add the pronoun after the particle, it would either be nonsensical or mean something completely different than the phrasal verb sense intended.

¹ by is a preposition here, introducing the PP 'by your friend'

² over is a particle here, because it does not take a complement

Tushar Raj
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  • Is after a preposition or a particle in the phrasal verb take after ? I can say "She takes after her father" but not "She takes her father after". So... if I'm understanding this correctly, after must be a preposition. I can see that by in the expression stand by is a preposition, meaning "next to", or "adjacent". But take after means to resemble or look like someone. Why is after (in "take after") a preposition and not a particle? – Mari-Lou A Jun 04 '15 at 08:49
  • How do you tell when over is a preposition or a particle? "To look over" I can say: "He looked me over" and "He looked over me" but they mean something quite different. – Mari-Lou A Jun 04 '15 at 08:51
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    @Mari-Lou A This usage of the term 'particle' was introduced because people realised that to call say 'off' an adverb in 'the plane took off' is (unless one is prepared to use over-vague terminology) nonsensical, as the plane is hardly 'taking in an off way', 'taking at off time', 'taking to off' ... do not make sense: the 'off' does not modify the action of the verb. Rather, 'take off' is a new lexical item, different in meaning from the constituent orthographic words. For cohesive pairings (etc), it makes more sense to use the term 'multi-word verb' (trans or intrans), and leave it at that. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 09:02
  • The real difficulty lies in deciding whether the 'verb + adverby-thingy' or 'verb [+ adverby-thingy] + prepositiony-thingy' is 'cohesive' enough to be considered as a single lexeme. Some strings retain a lot of the senses of the simplex verb and whotsit/s; others have very different meanings. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 09:06
  • This is only one approach; the term 'phrasal verb' is used by different people in various contradictory senses. MWVs have been discussed here before, and the difficulty of correctly identifying some usages as 'definitely MWV' or 'definitely verb + PP' has been mentioned. Your approach doesn't consider different verb-prepositiony thing cohesiveness. You're missing that 'He looked/ran up it' is fine when a PP is actually involved ('He approached the hill and ran up it') but not when a transitive MWV is involved (*Look at this bill; John ran up it at the hotel last week'). – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 09:09
  • @Mari-LouA: See edit. after is a prep becauses it indroduces the PP 'after her father' See example d – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 09:40
  • @Mari-LouA: 'look over' is a particle verb. In the second sentence, there is no phrasal verb used. look is a verb; `over is a prep. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 09:41
  • @EdwinAshworth: I didn't miss it, though the table remark was a bit too subtle. See edit. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 09:41
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    @Mari-Lou A If you look in the lit, you will find that the term 'phrasal verb' is not used consistently, even by linguists. Many in the ESL camp used the term one particular way, for instance, perhaps not realising that certain linguists used it rather (and confusingly) differently. I use MWV as a blanket term to include opaquely ... fairly transparently idiomatic usages; verb + adverby thing, verb + prepositiony thing etc, verb + nouny thing (eg take stock of); verb + verby (+ perhaps prepositiony thing) thing (make do with). This area is highly complex; search for eg 'Claridge' (eg here). – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 09:53
  • While few separable MWV usages seem to be acceptable using pronoun DOs, there are numerous examples on the internet (including one by R M Ballantyne) for certain Vsimplex - over - it constructions. In We talked over coffee, the construction is obviously [S +] V + PP, whereas in We talked over his thesis many would analyse as [S] + [trans][MW]V + NP, modelling on We discussed his thesis. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 10:07
  • So why can't I say "over" introduces the prepositional phrase (PP) over the matter in "You should think over the matter"? Isn't the matter a complement? Going back to my previous example: Look + over + object, Look + object + over i.e. "He looked over the assignment carefully", is fine, so is "He looked it over carefully" and "He looked over it carefully". (Phrasal verbs, or whatever they are called now, don't have any easy or fixed rules IMO! :) – Mari-Lou A Jun 04 '15 at 10:15
  • @Mari-LouA: This is just my theory, but if you look at the wiki link I sent you, prep. verbs use the preposition figuratively. In 'stand by me', it's being said that stand beside (by) me, which has an idiomatic meaning of support me. So by is a preposition in that sense. In particle verbs, the particle doesn't make sense that way, it's arbitrary, and hence we say that it doesn't take a complement. Over isn't a preposition because you aren't telling him to think over(above) something, and idiomatically implying something else. It's arbitrary. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 10:25
  • The primary issue is the coherence of the 'verb + prepositiony thing'. As John Lawler says (op cit), 'There are many more two-word verbs than one-word verbs in English ... And they're all idiomatic, though there are so many of them that many useful (but not completely reliable) patterns can be discerned.... [They] ... shift the boundaries to make [what looks like] {verb + preposition} a constituent'. In 'He jumped over the fence', '[He] [lived] [over the river]', S + V + PP. In 'He thought over the suggestions' = '[He] [considered] [the suggestions]', S + V + NP. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '15 at 10:32
  • I think to stand by him (= support* him)* is an "ordinary" verb+preposition usage. But there's also the "phrasal" verb meaning *be ready to do something. Which is usually intransitive, but not always. Used transitively, [to stand him by](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pXIqBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA217&dq=%22stand+him+by%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nkZwVe-JGeqw7Aa734KoCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22stand%20him%20by%22&f=false) means alert him (so as to be ready to do something)* or assign him to "standby" duty. – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 12:44
  • @FumbleFingers: My point is: in all these cases, whether literally or figuratively, you can picture the person standing by his friend, thus validating by as a preposition. This is not the case with particle verbs. But again, this is just my theory. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 12:47
  • @Tushar: But it's still got a discernible "prepositional" sense in I'll stand [him] by in case you need help - I (or *he) will be (figuratively or literally) by = around = near (and ready to help). But you can tell it's a "phrasal verb" when it has that specific meaning, because of the fact that if there's an object (him)* you have to interpose it between the verb and the "preposition". – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 12:57
  • @FumbleFingers: Maybe it's just me, but stand him by sounds odd to me. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 13:01
  • @Tushar: I assure you there's nothing syntactically unusual in the usage - it's just that there won't be that many contexts where it would be used. Perhaps you'll find I'll drop him* off on my way to work* more "familiar, intuitive". Again, you can tell it's a phrasal verb because the object can be interposed like that. And again you can put the object after the phrasal verb if you want - I'll drop off your parcel* on the way as well*. – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 14:08
  • @FumbleFingers: But would you say I'd drop off him? Completely different, right? – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 14:09
  • @Tushar: You should really be exploring this on English Language Learners if the usages aren't familiar to you. It's perfectly valid to say, for example, I'll drop off the letter* today, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for your parcel. Just because I can* interpose the object in a phrasal verb (...drop the letter off...) doesn't mean I have to. There will probably be contexts where the fact of using a *pronoun* rather than an ordinary noun affects the likelihood of each position, but none of that is forced by "grammar". – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 14:20
  • @FumbleFingers: You can check my post. I never said you had to do anything, except maybe in the case of the pronoun with particle verbs. And I didn't say it was ungrammatical, I said it causes confusion. And a lot of resources corroborate that, including a copy of Oxford where I first read it in the 'study pages' about phrasal verbs. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 14:22
  • @FumbleFingers: As for your example, I have mentioned that in cases where object isn't a pronoun, both constructs are valid. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 14:25
  • I think you're confusing "uncommon" with "invalid". There are plenty of contexts where a pronoun can validly be used after (rather than within) a phrasal verb. – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 14:52
  • @FumbleFingers: If you're talking about 'particle verbs', then I disagree that there are plenty of contexts. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 17:28
  • Fair point - it's all "relative", and relatively speaking it's not all that common to put the pronoun after a "phrasal verb". My point is simply that in my understanding, one of the key differences between "ordinary" verb+preposition MWVs and PPs is that the object (pronoun or noun) can go either within or after in the latter case. But doubtless there are borderline cases in the categorisation itself, system as well as in the acceptability of certain usages. – FumbleFingers Jun 04 '15 at 19:56