Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[organica]

To mean "to overcome" we often use "get over" as in "I can't get over him."

Would you explain in grammatical terms, why we can't place a pronoun between "get" and "over" while you must do it in phrases such as, "I want to get it over with," or "turn me off"?

Thank you!

[Anuradha Chepur]

A wild guess:
When you must put the pronoun between the phrase, then maybe it is (verb + adverb) and not (verb + preposition).
If it is (verb + prepositon), then the pronoun insertion is optional and not obligatory:
I want to get it over with.
or
I want to get over with it.

[organica]

Thank you for the help.

I think you are right except that pronoun insertion is optional in (verb+preposition).

If "over" in "I want to get over him" is preposition, are you saying it's also correct to say, "I want to get him over"?

Isn't it better to say in (verb+preposition) you cannot change the word order?

[Anuradha Chepur]

No, "I want to get him over" is not correct, and the get over in this sentence is homonymous with, but not the same as the one in "I want to get it over with".
In the former, it means "overcome", and in the latter it means "to put an end to".
So I think, the over is a preposition in one case and an adverb/adjective in the other.

As for what I said in the last post about the pronoun-insertion option, it is just a surmise and don't take my word for it. We have to look at a lot of examples before we can say anything for sure.