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Register and phrasal verbs

by Bryan Fletcher
FROM THE EDITOR
In this Issue • Introduction: are phrasal verbs 'informal'?
• Some corpus-based statistics
Contributors • When a phrasal verb is the best choice
Letters to the Editor
Write to Us Introduction: are phrasal verbs 'informal'?
Spread the Word
Back Issues Phrasal verbs can cause anxiety for learners and teachers alike. Apart from resolving the
Index problems of meaning and grammar, there is the difficult question of when it is
appropriate to use them. Many articles written as guides for using phrasal verbs claim
Register
that they should be used mainly in speaking rather than writing, and in informal rather
than formal situations and texts. It is often said that, in formal contexts, single-word
FEATURE equivalents are more appropriate than phrasal verbs. This advice may sometimes be
Phrasal verbs useful but it is an oversimplification, and if it is followed too closely, it can sometimes
international lead to unnatural or over-formal language. In fact, there are many situations – even in
quite formal texts – when a phrasal verb is the most natural-sounding way of expressing a
particular idea, so learners should be encouraged to use phrasal verbs as and when they
Your questions are most appropriate.
answered
Phrasal verbs can be found in all types of text. Take the example below:
COLUMNS
1a Issues brought up by the President of the College and by the Board of Regents shall
Focus on Phrasal Verbs: be addressed by the Faculty Senate and, if necessary, by the Association as …
Introduction (from a college constitution document)
Register and phrasal verbs 1b Answering the big questions raised by the war.
(from an online book review)
New word of the month
Sentence 1a is an extract from a very formal written text. The writers of this document
New abbreviations
could have chosen to use raised in place of brought up, but clearly the phrasal verb is
and acronyms natural and acceptable in this context. On the other hand, sentence 1b is from an online
book review – a much less formal register – and in this case the writer chose to use raise
Corpora tips rather than bring up. This is probably because the combination 'raise+question' is a
More than simple strong collocation, whereas 'bring up+question' is a rather rare combination. Phrasal
verbs are used across all types of text, even where the writer or speaker has the option of
searching:
choosing a single-word alternative. Although phrasal verbs tend to enter the language
getting more from the BNC through casual speech, in most cases they progressively become accepted across a wider
range of texts, until they reach even the most technical or conservative of text types.

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Some corpus-based statistics

In order to illustrate this point, consider the following statistics (based on the evidence of
a large language corpus) showing the frequency of the phrasal verb give up across
different text types; the figures show the approximate number of times this verb is used
per million words of text:
text type per million words
academic prose 10
fiction 30
newspapers 30
conversation 25

So although give up is clearly less common in academic writing, it is by no means

always avoided. Learners should appreciate that it is possible to use phrasal verbs in
formal contexts, and that they limit themselves unnaturally by accepting the idea that
they should use phrasal verbs in informal chat, for example, but not in academic writing
or in a presentation to business colleagues. Most of the verbs included in the Macmillan
Phrasal Verbs Plus dictionary (apart from those that are marked as informal, very
informal, impolite, or offensive) can be found in all types of text, and their use in English
is widespread and prevalent. Writers of legal documents and scientific papers may still
opt for tolerate in preference to put up with, or decelerate rather than slow down, but
even these extremely formal texts will contain some phrasal verbs.

A similar search in the corpus shows that the single-word verb tolerate is more common
than put up with in academic texts, with around 16 occurrences per million words of
text, compared with 3 for put up with. But with decelerate and slow down, the figures
are different, showing that decelerate is simply a rare and rather specialized term, with
fewer than 0.5 occurrences per million words in all registers. By contrast, the equivalent
phrasal verb slow down registers about 10 occurrences per million in academic texts.

Below are some examples of texts that include slow down, showing that this common
phrasal verb appears even in very formal texts:

Once dormant, however, their metabolism slows down so much that

the pineal is virtually switched off.
(from a zoology textbook)

The current structure would need to be searched to establish whether or

not the required paths exist, which would slow down the building
algorithm.
(from a computer science textbook)

The second WHO review of its 'Health for All' policy concludes that
'the implementation of strategies to achieve those aims has in many
cases slowed down'.
(from a medical journal)

There are many situations in which a phrasal verb may be more appropriate than a single-
word verb. Often there are subtle differences in meaning. The meaning of one will rarely
cover exactly the same semantic ground as the other. In the case of the slow down /
decelerate pair, we find that slow down can comfortably be used in a much wider range
of contexts:

2a He was highly agitated and speaking too fast so I asked him to slow down.
2b He was highly agitated and speaking too fast so I asked him to decelerate.

Decelerate provides an alternative to slow down only in certain specialized contexts, and
this explains its comparative rarity. The learner who ignores slow down in formal
registers will be left searching for another expression for some time.

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When a phrasal verb is the best choice

The idea that phrasal verbs should be avoided in formal registers perhaps reflects a belief
that the phrasal verb is somehow an 'imperfect' alternative to the single-word verb. But
this is a misconception. Phrasal verbs are not just an informal version of 'purer' English.
In many cases they fill important lexical gaps: that is, they express concepts for which
there is no obvious single-word equivalent. In such cases, there really is no natural way
of saying something other than through a phrasal verb – and choosing a single-word
equivalent risks sounding stilted or pompous. Compare:

3a It was going to be a special night so she decided to don her new Old Skool Vans.
3b She put on her new Nikes.

In 3a the use of the verb don is either slightly affected, or is used in order to emphasize
the special nature of the night referred to. But in most contexts, put on is a much more
natural choice.

There is a large number of phrasal verbs that native speakers use in all registers including
formal and technical. The Macmillan Defining Vocabulary – a list of the 2,500 English
words used for writing the definitions in Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus – includes the
following 16 phrasal verbs:

consist of deal with

get up (= get out of bed) give up
grow up happen to
leave out look for
make up (= invent) pick up
put down (= put something on the floor etc) put on (= get dressed)
slow down stick out
take off (= remove clothes) wake up

These words are included in the Defining Vocabulary because they are the most usual
and natural ways of expressing these ideas. Compare some of the one-word equivalents
to these very common phrasal verbs:

phrasal verb one-word equivalent

leave out omit
look for seek
put on don
stamp out eradicate
stick out protrude

Most of these single-word verbs are much less common than the phrasal verbs. Put on is
20 times more frequent than the rather literary word don. Protrude is only about half as
frequent as stick out, and it is used mostly in technical contexts and occasionally in
fictional descriptions.

Learning phrasal verbs is very much a part of learning English and not just something a
learner does to sound 'authentic' or to be able to talk to native speakers. Phrasal verbs are
found in all types of text and are essential for expressing many ideas in natural English.
Learners and teachers alike should study them in context and get to know the
collocational patterns they most commonly occur in, just as they do for other vocabulary.
Understanding when it is appropriate to use a phrasal verb instead of a single-word verb,
and knowing which gaps in the language are best covered by phrasal verbs, are two keys
to writing and speaking natural English. A good dictionary and a lot of exposure to
phrasal verbs will make it easy.

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