Haskins Publications

Number	594
Year	1986
Drawer	10
Entry Date	11/17/1999
Authors	Browman, C. P.
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Publication	Language and Speech, Vol. 29, Part 4, 311-334.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0594.pdf
Abstract	The V-particle construction in Eng has two forms when occurring with a nominal direct O: the particle can precede the O (eg, look up the information) or follow it (eg, look the information up). In experiment 1 (N = 64), a preliminary investigation of particle placement in written texts & recorded spontaneous conversations was conducted. Based on proposed binary factors conditioning particle placement derived from this analysis, 26 sentences were constructed to test these factors. Each sentence consisted of a context followed by a scrambled set of words including a V-particle combination with a direct O. Items were presented to Ss for reconstruction twice, one week apart. The same task, using 64 items, was administered in experiment 2 (N = 160). Results show that the particle tends to be contiguous to the V when the V-particle combination is semantically or phonologically cohesive, ie, when the combination is idiomatic or when the particle begins with a vowel. A model within the framework of variable rules is proposed to handle the findings.
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