The goal of the present study is to perform a historical investigation of English phrasal verbs by using a diachronic collostructional analysis. Even though English phrasal verbs have been consistently studied both syntactically and semantically, they have been surrounded by misunderstandings and derogatory receptions. Using phrasal verbs was considered unnecessary and even inferior to their single-word Latinate counterparts. Against such misunderstandings on phrasal verbs, we try to provide an empirical refutation by analyzing the Corpus of Historical American English. By extracting 150 phrasal verbs from the corpus and dividing its timespan (1820-2019) into several periods via variability-based neighbor clustering (VNC) algorithm, we produced the list of phrasal verbs that were most attracted to each period. In addition, we conducted the Mann-Kendall test for a macroscopic historical analysis. The results show that the most attracted phrasal verbs are not in fact redundant; phrasal verbs are constructions with distinct meanings. Also, it is shown that phrasal verbs have been on the rise from the 1820s to the present. Based on these results, we argue against the traditional misconception that English phrasal verbs are unnecessary combinations between lexical verbs and adverbial particles.
1. Introduction
2. Phrasal Verbs
3. Methodology
4. Findings
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion
References