Confused about differences with adverbial and prepositional verbs

[Drysden]

Hey everyone,

This is my first post here so please bear with me.

My Czech student today asked me if "run along" was a phrasal verb in the sentence "We rang along the river." I said it was because I figured that "along" was an adverb there. But the more I think about it, the more I figure that it's actually a preposition.

Thinking more about it, I found myself just getting confused about two-part verbs, specifically phrasal and prepositional verbs and now I'm wondering if I should just teach both of those together instead of dividing the two types up.

I've always thought I could easily see the difference between a preposition and an adverb, but this has cast a bit of doubt on me. When I checked a sheet of phrasal verbs with "get" they had "get out," as in, "Get that cat out of here," but this is different from "along," no?

Another one of my students said that they were taught adverbial and prepositional verbs grouped together as phrasal verbs. Can it be that some grammarians see phrasal verbs as simply a verb + another word?

If anyone can help explain to me the differences between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to look over this forum for more information, of course, but I just found it while researching this question between classes and haven't had time yet to poke around here in depth.

Many thanks!

[5jj]

If anyone can help explain to me the differences between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs, I'd appreciate it.

Unfortunately the terms are used in different ways by different writers.

Here is one rather dull attempt to explain things: http://www.gramorak.com/Articles/Phrasal.pdf

[Drysden]

Hi 5jj,

Thanks for the reply, but unfortunately when I hit that link no page or pdf shows up.

[5jj]

Thanks for the reply, but unfortunately when I hit that link no page or pdf shows up.

Sorry, but I don't understand that. I have just tried the link I posted, and it took me straight there./

[Drysden]

It's probably something with my computer, then. Suddenly I've realized that if I go to a webpage that is just a portal for a PDF, I can't access the file. I'm not sure what happened because this never used to be a problem.