Intransitive Phrasal-Prepositional Verbs in English: A Case of Constructional Idiom

There are intransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs in English which are intermediate between fixed and free combinations such as look in on ‘visit’ in He looked in on his parents. They are not permanently fixed with the idiomatic meaning, but partly, though limitedly, productive such as call in on, drop in on, pop in on, etc. This paper argues that these multiword combinations are a constructional idiom that is stored in the lexicon as an underspecified form with the constructional meaning. The idiom has the unspecified verb (V) and noun phrase (NP) with the particle (Prt) and preposition (P) specified, as in V in on NP ‘visit NP’. It is then fused with a compatible lexical verb in the lexicon to form a lexical VP, and then with a suited noun phrase in phrasal syntax to complete the VP. This lexical VP analysis is proposed with an alternative in terms of Jackendoff’s (2002) parallel architecture of grammar.