Phrasal verbs --- You are right, phrasal verbs a superpower! These are particles which no longer behave as normal prepositions. Take the prepositional phrase 'To run [up a hill]' and the phrasal verb 'to [run up] a bill' then see how the syntactic distribution differs as you change the constructions: Co-ordination: 'He ran up a hill and into a wood' VS *'he ran up a bill and into a problem' (where * designates an ill formed sentence.

Topicalisation: It's a hill (not a mountain) that he ran up VS *Its a bill that he ran up

Pronouns He ran up it yesterday VERSUS he ran it up yesterday

Semantically, phrasal verbs are often opaque (more than the sum of its parts)

Source author: Biljana Scott biscott@diplomacy.edu