Abstract

This paper deals with the specific combinations of verbs and particles known as phrasal verbs, analyzing them with regards to the progressive aspect. The analysis is based on a corpus containing frequent and illustrative examples of phrasal verbs with particles down, out and on. The author considers the interaction between the semantic features and the progressive aspect markers of verbs in various sentential contexts, as well as the effect of the particles on the aktionsart category of the verbs. Three English informants gave their opinion on the grammaticality of the examples and offered their interpretation. The paper concludes with some general remarks concerning the findings on possible interpretations of the progressive