MPVP-Language-Study-Register.pdf

Language Study LS 13

..........................................................................................................................

Introduction: are phrasal

verbs ‘informal’?

Phrasal verbs can cause anxiety for

learners and teachers alike. Apart from

resolving the problems of meaning and

grammar , there is the difﬁcult question

of when it is appropriate to use them.

Many articles written as guides for

using phrasal verbs claim that they

should be used mainly in speaking

rather than writing, and in informal

rather than formal situations and texts.

It is often said that, in formal contexts,

single-word equivalents are more

appropriate than phrasal verbs. This

advice may sometimes be useful but it

is an oversimpliﬁcation, and if it is

followed too closely, it can sometimes

lead to unnatural or over-formal

language.

whereas ‘bring up+question’ is a rather

rare combination. Phrasal verbs are

used across all types of text, even where

the writer or speaker has the option of

choosing a single-word alternative.

Although phrasal verbs tend to enter

the language through casual speech, in

most cases they progressively become

accepted across a wider range of texts,

until they reach even the most technical

or conservative of text types.

Some corpus-based statistics

In order to illustrate this point, consider

the following statistics (based on the

evidence of a large language corpus)

showing the frequency of the phrasal

verb give up across different text types;

the ﬁgures show the approximate

number of times this verb is used per

million words of text:

In fact, there are many situations – even

in quite formal texts – when a phrasal

verb is the most natural-sounding way

of expressing a particular idea, so

learners should be encouraged to use

phrasal verbs as and when they are

most appropriate.

text type

per million words

academic prose

ﬁction

newspapers

conversation

Phrasal verbs can be found in all types

of text. Take the example below:

So although give up is clearly less

common in academic writing, it is by

no means always avoided. Learners

should appreciate that it is possible to

use phrasal verbs in formal contexts,

and that they limit themselves

unnaturally by accepting the idea that

they should use phrasal verbs in

informal chat, for example, but not in

academic writing or in a presentation

to business colleagues. Most of the verbs

in this dictionary (apart from those that

are marked as informal , very informal ,

impolite ,or offensive ) can be found in

all types of text, and their use in English

is widespread and prevalent. Writers of

legal documents and scientiﬁc papers

may still opt for tolerate in preference

to put up with ,or decelerate rather

than slow down , but even these

extremely formal texts will contain

some phrasal verbs.

1a Issues brought up by the President

of the College and by the Board of

Regents shall be addressed by the Faculty

Senate and, if necessary, by the

Association as . . . (from a college

constitution document)

1b Answering the big questions raised

by the war. (from an online book

review)

Sentence 1a is an extract from a very

formal written text. The writers of this

document could have chosen to use

raised in place of brought up , but

clearly the phrasal verb is natural and

acceptable in this context. On the other

hand, sentence 1b is from an online book

review – a much less formal register –

and in this case the writer chose to use

raise rather than bring up . This is

probably because the combination

‘raise+question’ is a strong collocation,

A similar search in the corpus shows

that the single-word verb tolerate is

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: