Korean Job Discussion Forums

[raewon]

I have a question about the following sentence:

They found a ladder and climbed up it to get the cat.

Is the underlined part grammatically incorrect?

One of my trusty references (The Teacher's Grammar of English) gives the following:

[edwardcatflap]

The rule doesn't apply to unseperable transitive phrasal verbs it's true

Thus

I got over my problem 0
I got over it 0
I got it over x
I got my problem over x

Thus the original sentence is correct.

[Adventurer]

[FMPJ]

"Climb" means "to go or come up", so "climb up" is redundant, like "enter into" or "exit out of."

[raewon]

Thanks for the replies.

edwardcatflap - Thanks, that makes the rule clear.

FMPJ - Yes, that's a good point that I would agree with.
"They found a ladder and climbed it to get the cat." does the trick.
But the focus is on phrasal verbs, and I didn't choose "climb up".

Turning to Google...
"climb up the ladder" 7,910,000 results
"climb the ladder" 964,000 results

[schwa]

[young_clinton]

Phrasal verbs are verbs that cannot be figured out by examining the grammer and vocabulary. Climb up, is not a phrasal verb.

Bite the big one, or Kick the bucket, those are phrasal verbs. I can think of some others, Lost his marbles, Hit the road etc.

[raewon]

Thanks for that insight, young_clinton. That's an interesting way of explaining why the original sentence is correct - it's not even a phrasal verb to begin with.

But I just came across this...

[some waygug-in]

[Adventurer]

[some waygug-in]

You can argue if you want to, but in the strict grammatical sense it is not.


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phrasal+verb


For example : Turn on the light.

If we remove the "on" the sentence makes no sense or has a completely different meaning.

This is not the case with "climb up" as has already been shown.


further, from your own link:


Grammarians have adopted two main position with regard to the nature and use of phrasal verbs: (1) That the literal use of a form like go up is not a phrasal verb as such, but a verb operating with a particle: The balloon went up into the air. The term phrasal verb should properly be reserved for figurative and idiomatic uses: The balloon went up (= The crisis finally happened). Here, it is the holistic and semantic aspect of go up which is considered to identify the type, not syntax or morphology. (2) That the term covers both the literal and figurative/idiomatic uses and therefore includes syntax, morphology, and semantics: that is, both senses of go up, as above. This is the position adopted in the following review, which begins with a consideration of the grammatical aspects of phrasal verbs under three headings: transitivity and word order; particles functioning as adverbs and/or prepositions; and the position of adverbs.
Transitivity and word order.

[The Cosmic Hum]

[edwardcatflap]

A bit of a grey area this one IMO.

Phrasal verbs are usually said to be idiomatic but often text books include structures they call 'phrasal verbs' which seem fairly literal. E.g.

He put down the cup.

As for pronoun position sometimes they seem ok in both phrasal verb and prepositional phrase as in the examples previously given

Phrasal verb - look over
I need to look over these notes before the test. I need to look over them 0
Verb plus prepositional phrase
I had to look over his shoulder to see his answers on the test paper.
I had to look over it 0

Another example

I ran over the bridge - Verb plus prepositional phrase
I ran over it 0

I ran over the dog in my car - phrasal verb
I ran over it 0

However other examples don't seem to work.

I picked up the pen - Verb plus prepositional phrase
I picked up it x
I picked up some French - Phrasal verb
I picked up it x

[The Cosmic Hum]