"Get on": is it transitive, intransitive or both?

Question

I'm new here (in the sense of asking a question, but I often use the site for reference.)

I have a question regarding the phrasal verb "get on", or more specifically when used with "with", eg. "get on with".

My confusion is partly regarding whether "get on" is transitive or intransitive. When I search the web I always find "get on" listed as intransitive, even when using an example like:

She gets on with her brother

The problem is I found another site that had a similar example that classed her brother as a direct object. But that would make it transitive, right? I think part of my problem is I'm not always sure what makes a verb transitive!

I thought about another verb, walk, that can be both transitive and intransitive and sentences like:

I walked a lot - *intransitive?*
I walked with her - *transitive?*
I walked many miles - *transitive?*
I walked the dog - *transitive?*

And then I thought back to get on with sentences like:

I get on with her - *transitive?*
I get on at school - *transitive?*
We get on - *intransitive?*
I'm getting on well - *intransitive?*

I'm not sure if "with her" and "at school" would be classed as direct objects. Any clarification would be much appreciated! I have to do a TEFL later this year and this is one area I want to understand better.

Alex

Answer 1

Get on, as you've used it, is an intransitive phrasal verb. Here is the OED's take on it:

get, v. PHRASAL VERBS to get on 8. intransitive. Of a person: to enjoy or maintain friendly relations or intimacy with (another); (of more than one person) to agree, harmonize, fraternize, or enjoy friendly relations (together).
_{Source: Oxford English Dictionary (login required)}

Here are some examples:

Bob and I just don't get on.
We get on well.
They get on with everyone.

Well functions as an adverb, as does the prepositional phrase with everyone.

If you want, you can call get on with a phrasal-prepositional verb, as seen at Cambridge Dictionary's Phrasal verbs and multi-word verbs. A prepositional verb is one that usually collocates with a particular preposition (e.g. get on with with or laugh with at). The prepositional verb is considered intransitive as it cannot take an object itself:

The art critic looked at the painting. (correct)
*The art critic looked the painting. (incorrect)
His parents have been arguing about money. (correct)
*His parents have been arguing money. (incorrect)
His parents have been arguing. (correct)
_{Source: Prepositional Verbs and Verb Phrase Complements (see also references at end)}

Often, prepositional verbs—even though they are intransitive—can use their prepositional phrase's object as a subject in a passive voice construction. Like this:

Active: They laughed at the clown. Passive: The clown was laughed at [by them].

Others are idioms that can't be separated. Like this:

Active: She gets on with her brother. Passive: *Her brother is gotten on with [by her]. (*don't do that)

Answer 2

"Get on" cannot be thought of as either transitive or intransitive. The property of "transitivity" applies to verbs and prepositions but not to combinations of words.

Analyzing combinations of verb and preposition as "multi-word/phrasal verbs" is misleading. To make this concept plausible, authors of traditional grammars had to introduce terms such as transitive and intransitive phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, phrasal-prepositional verbs, which further divided into subtypes etc. No need to say that this made understanding the whole terminology a challenge on its own.

Also, under this analysis the concepts of "orthographic word" and "grammatical word" have to be kept strictly apart, the latter encompassing combinations of two or three orthographic words, which do not even have to be in sequence. This dramatically dilutes the definitions of word classes and made the very term "word" obscure.

This can be illustrated in these examples:

1. She brought up the child (in conversation) / She brought the child up (in conversation).

2. She brought up the child (in New York) / She brought the child up (in New York).

3. She brought up the child (in her arms) / She brought the child up (in her arms)(or: She brought the child up the stairs. etc)

In the first two the verb "bring" and the preposition "up" form an idiomatic lexical unit - obviously, we will interpret meaning 1 as "mention/introduce" and 2 as "raise". .

In terms of category, traditional grammars put the "up" in the first two sentences in the category of "adverb (and particle at the same time)". In the third one "up" is a preposition when followed by a noun phrase: She brought the child up the stairs. and adverb when it is not : She brought the child up.

The problem that this analysis causes can be clearly seen in dictionaries, which take pretty different approaches in the organization of entries.

To take as an example labeling verb-preposition combinations which cannot be interpreted on their own in isolation from nouns or other words that form the idiom . Some dictionaries, for example, have an entry for the phrase "make up to someone" meaning "be sycophantic" (Oxford LD labels it as a "phrasal verb") but not for the similar "make it up to someone" meaning "to compensate". Others (Collins, Macmillan, Longman ..) give both these meanings under the same entry (of course, the latter meaning with the intervening "it" - "make it up to someone") Merriam Webster labels both, "make up to someone" and "make it up to someone" as idioms. They label "bring up" as a verb, "come up to" as a "phrasal verb" , "put up with" is found under the entry for "put up", which is labeled "verb", etc.

On the other hand, what most dictionaries have in common is the general idea of "phrasal verb" as an idiomatic combination of a verb and preposition, but not the literal one. This excludes from the category the "bring up" in my third sentence .

There may be some variations in both labeling and the content of the definition. For example, "bring up" is "verb" in MW, and "phrasal verb" in other dictionaries I checked. Vocabulary.com starts the entry for "bring up" with the literal meaning "raise from lower to higher position" and continues with more idiomatic meanings: mention, raise, vomit. Oxford LD gives these three idiomatic meanings first adding to them the literal meaning of "making something appear on the computer screen" etc.

To cut the long story short, it is a blind alley to think of verb-preposition combinations such as "get on", "bring up", "come up with" etc as single words. "Transitivity" is a property shared by verbs and prepositions, but not their combinations. So we can speak of "get", "bring", "come", etc as transitive/intransitive, and we can think about prepositions up, down, on, in etc. in the same way. "Up" in "She brought the child up" is intransitive - it doesn't have an object of its own. "Up" in "She brought the child up the stairs" is transitive, taking "the stairs" as its object.

The transitivity of prepositions has grammatical consequences - we can move the intransitive "up" next to the verb: She brought up the child. but not the transitive one * She brought up the stairs the child. The fact that "bring up" is idiomatic in the other two examples have a strong grammatical effect of course. Most grammatical operations on idioms are simply precluded. Unlike literal interpretations, these are fixed, "take it or leave it" word combinations.