Are phrasal verbs a peculiarity of English language, and historically how it happened?

Answer 1

No, sorry they are a peculiarity of human language. I've been studying languages for a large part of my life and they happen in most of the languages I've studied and if they don't, they exist in the form of a verb-adverb or verb preposition semantic unit (which technically could be called phrasal verb) This happens a lot in French with the verb 'faire' and Italian with 'fare'. It is however the language that most heavily relies on them to make sense. I think it has to do with the practical approach of English and it's humble grammatical origins. Since it has been learned by so many people in so many places, rather that to accrue the whole vocabulary, you only have to learn a few prepositions and some adverbs to gain a considerable range of expressions. After all it is a lot easier to say 'get down' than it is to say 'descend'

Answer 2

Phrasal Verbs In French

Answer 3

I think they are. I speak three other languages fluently, and neither of them makes use of phrasal verbs. I don't know how they developed though, but they're very much, if not exclusively, a specific of English.

To the person above who said every language has them, I dare him/her name just one other language that actually has phrasal verbs other than English.

And the person below me, the "professor" obviously misunderstood your question. A phrasal verb is a verb followed by a preposition or adverb, not a verb with an added prefix, like many verbs in German are, for example. They do NOT qualify as phrasal verbs, although they are similar structures, your original question is about phrasal verbs, not structures similar to phrasal verbs. Like I said, I personally don't know any other language that uses phrasal verbs as such, and that's certainly not German (which I speak fluently), nor any other Germanic language.

Answer 4

Phrasal verbs, verbs which consists of a verb followed by an adverbial particle, are similar to other structures in Germanic languages, but are not identical. In other Germanic languages, the adverbial part is a prefix on the verb rather than an independent particle following it. The prefixes are separable and can be placed in other locations in the sentence much like the English separate adverbial particles can be. English phrasal verbs do not have the same origin, however, as Germanic adverbial prefixes, even though they act similarly and were formed under the same pressures. Other languages also have separable adverbial prefixes, such as Hungarian. Phrasal verbs like English has are also found. The addition of an adverbial prefix or particle is a common tool to specify and clarify the action of the verb in the world's languages. In Shoshoni (North America) and Mokilese (South Pacific), adverbial suffixes (which are not separable) perform this function. The key feature of the English phrasal verb--a separable adverbial particle--is found in other Germanic languages, in (unrelated) Hungarian, and, depending on the linguistic interpretation of what constitutes a lexical unit, in many East Asian languages as well. I have not made an exhaustive survey of the topic, these are just the grammars I happened to pick off the shelf to check today.

As to their historical origins, they originated as certain verbs became more and more associated with specific prepositional phrases over time. As the nominal object associated with the preposition became less and less important, the preposition became more closely tied to the verb and less tied to the noun. Eventually, the object of the preposition became unnecessary and thus a phrasal verb is born. This is the same process which gave rise to similar structures in other Germanic languages. Here is a simple test for determining whether a form is a phrasal verb or a verb followed by a prepositional phrase:

1) Phrasal verb: I looked up the word in the dictionary, I looked it up in the dictionary

2) Prepositionial phrase following a verb: I looked up the mountain, ***I looked it up (does NOT mean "I looked up the mountain")

EDIT for the person above: German separable prefixes are EXACTLY equivalent in their meaning and function to English phrasal verbs. They consist of a verb and separable adverbial piece. That is exactly what an English phrasal verb is. You need a little linguistics training before categorically dismissing them just because one occurs before the verb and the other occurs after. Perhaps if your linguistic training consisted of more than German, English, and French, you would see the wide range of structures that exist in the world's languages and not just in those three related languages. The English phrasal verbs perform the same function as the German separable prefixes. "If it walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, and looks like a duck.....It's a duck"

Answer 5

Phrasal verbs exist in most Germanic languages - not just English.