In an effort to answer ESL/EFL students questions about the word order alternation in the phrasal construction in English, this paper reiterates the peculiar grammatical properties of the transitive phrasal verb in English and examines the ordering of its postverbal constituents. It lays particular focus on the principal factors that trigger the word order alternation and the meaning differences that the alternation brings about. It is shown that the particle goes with the verb and that the alternation in the ordering of the postverbal constituents is principally governed by grammatical weight for the ease of parsing in Hawkin s (1994, 2000, 2001) sense, information structure, and idiomaticity: the heavier and newer the object is, the more likely it is placed sentence-finally; the more idiomatic the phrasal verb is, the more tendency there is for the particle to occur adjacent to the verb. Based on the one-form-one-meaning isomorphic iconicity and sign-oriented approach, I, concurring with Gorlach (2000), argue that the two possible orderings of postverbal constituents in English phrasal constructions are not free variation: [Verb Prt NP] represents the possible completion of the action with its effects potentially marked for result, while [Verb NP Prt] implies that the action is completely finished and its effects explicitly marked for result.
1. Introduction
2. Defining Characteristics of Phrasal Verbs
3. Principal Factors that Induce Particle Placement
4. A Sign-oriented Approach to the Semantics of the Word Order Alternation in the Phrasal Construction
5. Summary