English Language and Literature Commons^™

Phrasal verbs, such as "run up" in "They always run up our electric bill," have long been of interest to researchers of English linguistics. Scholars have been particularly focused on the definition and categorization of these multi-word items, as well as their grammatical, pragmatic, and semantic functions. Additionally, phrasal verbs have been examined historically, and recently corpus methods have been used to begin investigating phrasal verb frequency and patterns of variation across registers. But few studies have combined diachronic and register-based approaches to analyze the development of the phrasal verb in American English. This study uses large, monitor corpora--The Corpus …