Learn English – In phrasal verbs, why is it sometimes considered ‘adverbs’, and sometimes ‘prepositions’

adverbsphrasal-verbsprepositions

I was studying phrasal verbs and I couldn't figure out something. The source separated them into three type which are:

Type1: Verb + Adverb

Examples:

Put off, turn down, get up, break down

Type2: Verb + Preposition

Examples:

Look after, talk about, wait for

Type3: Verb + Adverb + Preposition

Examples:

Get on with, put up with, run out of, look forward to

What makes me confused: The words which are called adverb in types 1 and 3 are accepted as prepositions generally. Am I wrong? So why are 'prepositions' called as an adverb? Here is the preposition list I found on the internet.

So what is the mentality that makes a person categorize phrasal verbs into, especially type 1 and type 2?

Best Answer

What you call phrasal verbs have always been one of the messier parts of English syntax, and grammarians do not agree on what to call them, or how they are put together, or what to call their components.

Your first source is rather old-fashioned in one respect: it calls words like on and in ‘prepositions’ only when they take explicit objects; when they do not, it calls them ‘adverbs’. Other grammarians call on and in used in verb idioms like this ‘particles’ when they do not take objects; and still other grammarians, represented by your second source, claim that they are always ‘prepositions’, but may be used either transitively, when they take objects, or intransitively, when they don’t—just like transitive and intransitive verbs. This last version has the prestige of the highly admired Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) behind it; but it is still contested.

Everybody, however, acknowledges that there are three different patterns, and my advice is that you focus on that. You will have to learn every single one of these idioms individually anyway, and will have to know which pattern each idiom follows. Don’t worry about what to call the pieces, just know how the pieces are used.

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