Wednesday 16 December 2015

Phrasal verbs in the time-away pattern

Remember the verb-particle paradox, which I wrote about last time? To remind you, this paradox concerns combinations such as turn NP [e.g. a paper; a criminalin, which must be words since they have a special meaning and can (if their meaning is appropriate, of course) occur in patterns where only single words are found (e.g. (1)), but which can't be words, since its parts can appear separated from each-other, as in (2)
(1) 'My gran says that's rubbish,' piped up Neville. (in a Harry Potter novel) (compare '...,' interrupted Neville, which is okay, but *'...,' spoke suddenly Neville, which isn't)
(2) I gave the book back. (compare: *I re- the book turned or *I turned the book re-)

Adele Goldberg, in an article to appear, argues against the word-view of verb-particle combinations on the grounds that we can't find them in the time-away construction:
(3) He vomited the night away.
(4) *He threw up the night away. (Goldberg's judgement) 
I'm not a native speaker of English, but I wonder whether (4) is all that bad. Here are some authentic examples reaped from the world wide web (and checked, as far as possible, for reliability, i.e., the source or user aren't obviously non-native):
(5) Do you sleep in the day away?
(6) soak up the night away in the hot tub
(7) red neck drunks bash up the night away 
(8) Me and my two friends dance off the night away. 
(9) we hung out the night away with greats such as Dave Holland, Max Roach, Roy Haynes, Roy Hargrove, Kenny Garrett, and one of our main piano heroes, Herbie Hancock. 
(10) Designed by Alberto Frias, it's basically a giant egg with a hole where you can crawl up in fetal position and chill out the day away. 
(11) It was great just chilling out the whole weekend away 
(12) We decided to just laze around the morning away before departing for the airport 
(13) Motel Cowboys jerking off The Night Away [apologies for the racy nature of this example]

So, an argument Goldberg uses against a possible morphological analysis of particle verbs can perhaps, if the above examples aren't completely suspect, be turned into an argument for it.

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