Tmesis - Verbs - English

English

English employs a large number of phrasal verbs, consisting of a core verb and a particle which could be an adverb or a preposition; while the phrasal verb is written as two words, the two words are analyzed semantically as a unit because the meaning of the phrasal verb is often unrelated (or only loosely related) to the meaning of the core verb. For example, turn off has a meaning unrelated to turn in Turn off the television set and the light.

Many English phrasal verbs are separable, in the sense that if they are transitive then the object is placed between the core verb and the particle if the object is a pronoun (and optionally if it is a short noun phrase, but not if it is a long noun phrase as in the example above). For example:

Turn off the light OR Turn the light off (optional tmesis)
Turn it off (mandatory tmesis)

This intervention of the object in the middle of the phrasal verb can be viewed as a form of tmesis even though the semantic unit being separated is written as two words even when not separated.

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