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American Heritage Dictionary defines "phrasal verb" as follow:

An English verb complex consisting of a verb and one or more following particles and acting as a complete syntactic and semantic unit, as look up in.

In this question is being asked whether "She went crying up the stairs" is unacceptable in comparison with "She went up the stairs crying."

I have thought that the former were unacceptable because "go up" is an inseparable phrasal verb, but I'm not sure on this circumstance because taking a look on grammar.ccc I'm not being able to find it neither in "Separable Phrasal Verbs" nor in "Inseparable Phrasal Verbs".

So, I am wondering if "go up" is a phrasal verb and and, if so, I ask: is it separable or inseparable?

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I'd say you can separate it by words/phrases still describing the verb, e.g. you could say 'she went all the way up crying' – Nieszka Jun 20 '12 at 9:22

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Go up in this context is not a phrasal verb but a prepositional verb. In the words of the ‘Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English’, ‘particle movement is not possible with prepositional verbs. Instead, the particle (actually a preposition) always comes before the noun phrase that is the direct object’. That means that ‘*She went the stairs up’ is not possible.

Whether ‘She went crying up the stairs’ is possible is another matter. I would say that it was, but that it was not the normal word order and that it would be used only for some special literary effect.

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She went crying up the stairs is definitely possible, although how you justify it is anyone's guess! – Dominic Cronin Oct 22 '12 at 21:31
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Up the stairs is a location adjunct that can move freely in the sentence. go up in this sense is definitely separable, and belongs to the least idiomatic kind of "phrasal verb", if it can be called that. The class of phrasal verbs is diverse and is a spectrum with gradient, rather than black-and-white in terms of separability.

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up vote 6 down vote

Go up is a phrasal verb – but, when it's used in this sense:

Maureen goes up the stairs.

then it's not being used as a phrasal verb. It's the verb go followed by the preposition up.

Examine the definitions of the phrasal verb:

enter image description here

When Maureen goes up the stairs, we're not talking about the process of construction, or about increasing in value, or about attending a university. The verb go could be replaced by climb or walk, and any fitting preposition can be used:

Maureen walks up the stairs, through the room, out the door, and across the front yard.

Here's an example of go up used as a phrasal verb:

I can't believe how fast Maureen's house went up. Seems like they just started building yesterday.

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To answer your last question: seperable. Gas went soaring up (prices rose sharply). This building went flying up (it was built in a hurry). – J.R. Jun 20 '12 at 10:25
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You're right; it's not a phrasal verb. But this answer might be a little bit misleading; I don't believe any of these lists of phrasal verbs are complete, so you can't conclude that something is not a phrasal verb just because it isn't on a list. – Peter Shor Jun 20 '12 at 11:40
@PeterShor: I had the exact same thought. The O.P.'s question contains a link to a page with a header that reads Common Phrasal Verbs. I think the word "Common" there implies the list is not intended to be exhaustive nor authoritative. (The screen shot in my answer was from an online dictionary, and depicts just a small sample of the many idiomatic uses of the word go.) – J.R. Jun 20 '12 at 13:55
It's not a transitive phrasal verb. The phenomenon of "separability" (more properly applied to German trennbare Vorsilben) refers to Particle Shift, as in this puzzle; but that process only applies to transitives. The question is rather whether go up is a constituent, and the answers given are correct: sometimes it is. Whether you want to call it a "Phrasal Verb" is up to you. – John Lawler Jun 20 '12 at 14:25
Surely it's only a phrasal verb if the meaning differs from what you'd get using the words separately. So "prices went up" isn't phrasal, but "he went up to university" is. Prices went somewhere, and the somewhere was up. When you say that a house went up, you aren't talking about the process of construction, but the result of it. Or am I missing the point? – Dominic Cronin Sep 10 '12 at 20:46
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