Idiomaticity and Collocation: The Case of Phrasal Verbs

This paper is part of my thesis which aims to examine the lexical and grammatical patterns of phrasal verbs. A phrasal verb is a two-word verb which consists of a main verb and a particle, both elements contributing to its meaning. The meanings of phrasal verbs can range across different degrees of idiomaticity. They can be classified as literal, semi-figurative and idiomatic phrasal verbs in terms of idiomaticity. The issue raises the question that how the collocation is affected given semantic opaqueness. It is hypothesized that a phrasal verb which is more idiomatic has more restriction on its collocates. The first part of this study will explore whether the English corpus data attests this hypothesis, and the second part will investigate the same phenomenon in a learner corpus. A comparison of the learner language and native English will be displayed to provide the disparity of constraints perceived by L2 learners and native writers. As my thesis is still in the initial stage, only preliminary results will be reported.