Phrasal Verb - Shifting

Shifting

A confusing aspect of phrasal verbs concerns the distinction between prepositional phrasal verbs and particle phrasal verbs that are transitive, as discussed and illustrated above. Particle phrasal verbs that are transitive allow some variability in word order depending on the relative weight of the constituents involved. Shifting often occurs when the object is very light, e.g.

a. Fred chatted up the girl with red hair.

b. Fred chatted her up.

c. ?Fred chatted the girl with red hair up.

a. They dropped off the kids from the war zone.

b. They dropped them off.

c. ?They dropped the kids from the war zone off.

a. Mary made up a really entertaining story.

b. Mary made it up.

c. ?Mary made a really entertaining story up.

Shifting occurs between two (or more) sister constituents that appear on the same side of their head. The lighter constituent shifts leftward and the heavier constituent shifts rightward, and this happens in order to accommodate the relative weight of the two. Dependency grammar trees are again used to illustrate the point:

The trees illustrate when shifting can occur. English sentence structures that grow down and to the right are easier to process. There is a consistent tendency to place heavier constituents to the right, as is evident in the a-trees. Shifting is possible when the resulting structure does not contradict this tendency, as is evident in the b-trees. Note again that the particle verb constructions (in orange) qualify as catenae in both the a- and b-trees. Shifting does not alter this fact.