The verb-particle construction in English has two forms when occurring with a nominal direct object. The particle can precede the object, e.g., look up the information, or follow it, e.g., look the information up. Experimental evidence based on 224 subjects is presented showing that the particle tends to be contiguous to the verb when the verb-particle combination is semantically or phonologically cohesive, i.e., when the combination is idiomatic or when the particle begins with a vowel. A model within the framework of variable rules is proposed to handle the data.
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