Phrasal Verbs: Usage and Acquisition (original) (raw)

Phrasal verbs represent a typical feature of English. Multiword expressions, and especially phrasal verbs, can assess the level of English language proficiency. However, learners of English tend to adopt a strategy of avoidance. Unpredictable, phrasal verbs can be difficult to both understand and remember for non-English speakers, which prompted to call them 'the scourge of the learner'. The role of multiword constructions has also been emphasized in theories of first language acquisition . They are indeed a rich and productive source of predication that children must master, doing so at very young ages. There is, nevertheless, a huge gap in the study of child language acquisition that has largely left unaddressed questions about how the child learns and acquires verb-particle constructions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the gradual development of verb-particle constructions in child language by examining longitudinal data from the spontaneous oral speech of Naima, an English-speaking girl from the Providence Corpus of the CHILDES database , between ages 0;11 and 3;10. My findings also support the claim that input and interaction play a major role in the language acquisition process. Indeed, by analyzing the emergence and usage of phrasal verbs by Naima, I will thus compare the top ten verb-particle construction types used by the child and the adult. Ultimately, I will show the correlation between the most frequently used phrasal verbs in adult speech and the earliest constructions acquired by Naima.