I'm trying to understand the difference between particles and prepositions for my English assignment but specifically I'm trying to identify parts of speech in the sentence "he couldn't hack it as manager so went back to his old job." What is "it" here? Is it a particle because "hack it" has a unique meaning, or is it a preposition because it is followed by a noun (as a classmate told me)?
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4Isn't it the object of the verb hack? – Yosef Baskin Aug 14 '22 at 15:38
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I understood that "hack it" has some special individual meaning and so was a phrasal verb but maybe I'm confused. If "it" is the object of "hack" then would you say "hack it as" is just verb, pronoun, adjective, with an idiomatic meaning? thanks. – noemi Aug 14 '22 at 16:04
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I don't cut it, she doesn't get it, and you can understand it. That get it and hack it are common doesn't make them verbal phrases like get off on rudeness, or hack up to little pieces. – Yosef Baskin Aug 14 '22 at 16:30
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Thank you for this explanation. :) – noemi Aug 14 '22 at 16:39
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Hello, noemi. I'm afraid that the answer the people who set your English assignment require may not be considered acceptable by various contributors here. The subject has been addressed here before; Constituency tests needed to differentiate between phrasal verbs and verb + prepositional phrase constructions is one such thread. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 14 '22 at 18:17
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This is a very interesting discussion. Thanks so much for sharing it. – noemi Aug 15 '22 at 21:34
1 Answers
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Neither.
Prepositional Verb
Seeing as how "it" isn't a preposition, "hack it" isn't a prepositional verb.
A prepositional verb is: a verb followed by a preposition, often with an idiomatic meaning. An example of a prepositional verb would be "count on" to mean "to depend or rely on" (e.g., "You can count on me, Boss.") or "come to" to mean "to become conscious after having been rendered unconscious" (e.g., "He's been passed out for the past 12 hours, but he just came to."), the ensuing "on" and "to," respectively, each being the operative preposition that makes such a verb a prepositional verb. It should be noted, by the way, that a prepositional verb is a type of phrasal verb such that all prepositional verbs are phrasal verbs, but not all phrasal verbs are prepositional verbs.
Since "it" in "hack it" is a pronoun (a type of noun), one serving as the direct object of the verb "hack," rather than a preposition, "hack it" cannot be a prepositional verb.
Phrasal Verb
Seeing as how the object of "hack" isn't always "it" when expressing the meaning of adequately handling a given situation, it's not a phrasal verb, either.
A phrasal verb is: a combination of verb and one or more particles functioning as "a single semantic unit" and often having an idiomatic meaning that could not be predicted from the meanings of the individual parts.
Using your example, one could just as aptly say, "He couldn't hack being manager so went back to his old job," no "it" required. While "it" does often appear with "hack" in such usage and while dictionaries often illustrate this particular usage of "hack" using "it" afterwards, "it" is nevertheless not a single semantic unit with "hack" since "it" can always be and often is readily switched out for whatever antecedent, whether expressed or implied, "it" stands in for as a pronoun. So, being just one of any number direct objects "hack" can have in this usage, "it" is not a single semantic unit with "hack" in this usage, not joined at the hip, as it were, so not such that where one goes, the other must follow, which all boils down to "hack it" not being a phrasal verb.
So what is "hack it" in your example?
It's merely an idiomatic, slang usage of the transitive verb "hack" followed by the direct object "it."
Benjamin Harman
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