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In the phrases "break open" and "break [sth.] open", is "open" an adjective or an adverb? Is it an adverbial or a complement?

For example:

The pods broke open and the seeds scattered on the wind.

The police broke open the door.

The burglars broke the locked safe open.

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cuixiaomei
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  • A verb. Break would be an adverb. But I think 'Break open' is a compound word that is considered as a verb. – Archie Azares Aug 30 '16 at 00:55
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    @Archie: Break is clearly a verb, not an adverb. Break is the part that is conjugated: the pod breaks open, not break opens. – Peter Shor Aug 30 '16 at 01:16
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    What is the significance of the gender tag to this question? – Lawrence Aug 30 '16 at 01:37
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    Break open is a phrasal verb. Phrasal verbs are composed of a verb and a particle. In break open, break is the verb and open is the particle. – John Lawler Aug 30 '16 at 02:19
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    @JohnLawler so is that particle an adverb? If not, I'd better retract my answer as it'd be misleading ! – Howard Pautz Aug 30 '16 at 02:20
  • It has an adverbial sense, but it functions grammatically as part of the verb and can't jump around in the sentence like most adverbs. Geoff Pullum calls them intransitive prepositions -- i.e, prepositions without objects. I like that idea. There are a number of parts of speech that were not discovered when the Romans came up with the classic 8. More on phrasal verbs here -- they're a well-known phenomenon in English. – John Lawler Aug 30 '16 at 02:23
  • @JohnLawler hmmm ok, look at those last two sentences ... open can move into one other position in each and still keep the same meaning. I take your word for it, do you think my answer below is incorrect - or merely insufficient? – Howard Pautz Aug 30 '16 at 02:27
  • Read a few of the answers and figure out what you think. – John Lawler Aug 30 '16 at 02:30
  • ok - @JohnLawler - sorry, I didn't notice the link in your earlier comment. Hmmm, this isn't so easy ;-0 OK, I've edited my answer accordingly, but this is way more complex than I thought, so I'll have to absorb all those posts you did over years on the subject. thanks! – Howard Pautz Aug 30 '16 at 02:42
  • Related: Distinguishing whether 'up' is a preposition or a part of a phrasal verb in 'he ran up a big hill / bill'. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 30 '16 at 10:48
  • I've seen an analyst claim that in 'Messi shot wide', the POS of 'wide' is indeterminate between adverb and adjective. Here, though, there is a strong argument that 'break open' should be regarded as a more cohesive unit than 'shoot wide', so the particle (or whatever) analysis is also available. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 30 '16 at 10:53
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    I'm now beginning to wonder if this is a case of "franisaw" is "a crobel modified by the anterior pedoble" --- http://meta.ell.stackexchange.com/questions/3191/standardization-terminology – Howard Pautz Aug 31 '16 at 01:38
  • @John Lawler: I remain unconvinced by Pullum’s “intransitive prepositions”, and see no difficulty with words having two functions. == The ship broke up – how did it break? It broke up (up adv. ‘completely’) == The ship broke up the ice / The ship broke the ice up (up adv. ‘completely’) Adverbs can be omitted and have a freedom of position that prepositions do not. == The ship broke up the river (up preposition – up the river = adverbial phrase). – Greybeard Mar 12 '20 at 00:46
  • Well, yes, of course. POS is, if anything, a guide rather than a law; just labels to help the grammarian. And certainly in English practically every word can be at least noun, verb, and adjective, with preposition, conjunction, and interjection not out of the question. Anything else is necessarily an adverb, unless you're playing with a full deck and can use POS like quantifier, classifier, complementizer, and can run off your own labels on a personal printer. Like calling "particles" Particles and deciding they're their own POS. – John Lawler Mar 12 '20 at 14:39

2 Answers2

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[EDIT - post comments] Before reading my answer, please review the links John Lawler provided in the comments above. It's here for convenience: https://english.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A15299+phrasal+verb I am not so convinced my answer is sufficient based on his and user:deadrat 's comments below and those above, but I'm leaving my answer here as an example of what seems to be a common misunderstanding, an over simplification, of a more complex subject.

All those forms are based on "broke open," making open an adverb. How was it broken? It was broken open.

Similar constructions, e.g.:

The police bashed in the window.
The police broke up the protests.

( Not sure, if this is considered a compound form ?)

But if you had, say:

The guard closed the open door.

then open would be an adjective. What kind of door? An open door.

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Howard Pautz
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The word open has a lot of definitions as different parts of speech. Its primary entry for Webster's is that of an adjective; however, scrolling down under this definition, you'll see also that it can function as an adverb.

Thus, break open would be diagrammed as:

break | open

verb | adverb

It is not a complement (break is an action verb here, not a linking verb, and adverbs are not used as objects). It is adverbial. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adverbial

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open

Also, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/open

The definition of open as a noun doesn't seem to fit "break open"; again, omitting it as an object

Since adverbs modify adjectives, verbs, and other adverbs, this one is modifying break and like an adverb, it answers a question about the verb that an adverb would ask, " What?" "Break what?" Open.

For example,

This is the police! Open the door, or we'll break open the door! [They'll break the door, but not how, but what are the police going to do with or to the door (they will use extreme force to open the door) and (of course here, "door" is the direct object)]

"Break down" the word down is the more common expression they would use, but here too, down is an adverb, the noun definition doesn't seem to fit.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/down

Arch Denton
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