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Cute, but English has tens of thousands of "phrasal verbs": Stand up, stand down, stand out, stand over, stand against, understand. Even more remarkable is tha
by aristus 16y ago
Cute, but English has tens of thousands of "phrasal verbs": Stand up, stand down, stand out, stand over, stand against, understand.
Even more remarkable is that native speakers use these constructions all of the time, yet the idea of a phrasal verb is apparently not taught in school.
- arundelo 16y agoThe point is that phrasal verbs are written spaced: "stand up" -- even when conjugated: "stood up", not "*standupped".
- aristus 16y agoWell, some phrases (and yes, phrasal verbs) get concatenated over time, like "understand", "overtake", "courtmarshal", "becalm", "whipsaw", etc. The conjugation and number rules work themselves out eventually, for example, "courts-marshal", "overtook". It's just one of the ways languages mutate. Usually the noun form mutates first, and later on the verb form, but not always.