PHARASAL

Phrasal verb complexes are particularly frequent in the English language, as they are in all Germanic languages. A phrasal verb complex has its literal usage, where the meanings of both the verb and the prepositional phrase are clear, as well as idiomatic usages, extensions from the core meanings of the verb and prepositional phrase. At times the idiom stems from the verb, and at times from the prepositional phrase, and at times from both.
Literal Usage
Many verbs in English can interact with an adverb or a preposition, and the verb + preposition/adverb complex is readily understood when used in its literal sense. Note that the difference between preposition and adverb is very vague in English, and for all intents and purposes the so-called "adverb" is in actual fact a prepositional phrase in its own right. True adverbs cannot appear in such complexes. This usage of the phrasal verb complex is its core or basic use, from which idiomatic usages derive.

• "He walked across the square."
• "She opened the shutters and looked outside."
• "When he heard the crash, he looked up."

The function of the prepositional phrase/particle in such clauses is to show the relationship between the action (walked, opened, looked) and the relative positioning, action or state of the subject. Even when such prepositions appear on their own, they have a retrievable prepositional object. Thus, He walked across clearly shows that the "walking" is "across" a given area. In the case of He walked across the square, across the square is a prepositional phrase (with across as its head-word). In both cases, the single-word/multi-word prepositional phrase (across and across the square) is independent of the verb. The action of the subject (walking) is being portrayed as having happened in/at/on/over a certain location (across the square). Similarly in She opened the shutters and looked outside and When he heard the crash, he looked up. Outside is logically outside (of) the house, and up is similarly a prepositional adjunct (= upwards, in an upwards direction, he is looking in a direction that is higher than where his eyes were previously directed).
Idiomatic usage
For some writers, teachers and researchers, any verb + particle complex is a potential phrasal verb, while for others only those that are found in idiomatic uses are true "phrasal verbs". The reasoning for this is that in the idiom the combined meaning of verb plus particle appears to be totally different from each of its component parts, and that ergo the semantic content of the phrasal verb cannot be predicted by its constituent parts, as appears to be the case with get over and get over with:

• "I hope you will get over your operation quickly."
• "Work hard, and get your examination over with."

Here, the claim is that the literal meaning of "get over X", in the sense of "to climb over something to get to the other side", no longer applies to explain the subject's enduring an operation or the stress of an examination which they have to overcome.
However, such researchers not only confuse the concepts of concrete, abstract and idiom, but also - by focusing solely on the phrasal verb complex - fail to keep in mind that any word or phrase can be used in idiomatic ways, with no change in its underlying meaning, but rather as an abstract extension of the core meaning. Get over X in the above is merely an extension of its normal application of getting over a barrier from the physical to the abstract. Get X over with Y similarly is an abstract application of the concrete construction, found in clauses such as He got the pig over the fence with difficulty and He got over the finishing line first with an extra spurt.
In her introduction to "Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, What this dictionary contains", Rosemary Courtney includes as a third category of the use of verb+preposition complexes:

3. Idioms which are formed from phrasal verbs, such as let the cat out of the bag. These idioms are printed in heavy type. Idioms have a meaning which is different from the meaning of the single words, and usually have a fixed word order.^[4]

Courtney then cites among many other examples in the dictionary such phrases as "to add insult to injury", "to add fuel to the flames", "to leave someone in the lurch", "to scare someone out of their wits", etc. However, it can be argued that the appearance of a verb+preposition complex in such is "coincidental"; it is the whole phrase and its imagery that is the idiom, not the individual words within it.

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Phrasal verb patterns

A phrasal verb complex contains one or more prepositional phrases [alt. particle, preposition, adverb], and can enter into transitive and intransitive structures. Like all phrases which involve prepositions, phrasal verb complexes often involve prepositional stranding

• The plumber soon sorted out the shower problem/The plumber soon sorted the shower problem out (with object)
• The path branched off to the river (no object)
• Where did the path branch off to (stranding)

Particle verbs

Phrasal verb complexes that contain a prepositional phrase ("particle") such as up are called by some writers "particle verbs". As they fit into both intransitive and transitive clauses, the presence or absence of a direct object to the verb depends on this. When there is a noun as the direct object, the particle can usually appear on either side of it, although very long noun phrases tend to come after the particle. When the object is a personal pronoun, the particle must always follow:

• "When I entered the room he looked up." (intransitive)
• Switch off the light. (transitive)
• Switch the light off. (transitive)
• Switch off the lights in the hallway next to the bedroom in which the president is sleeping. (transitive)
• Switch" it/them off. (transitive)
• Switch it off. (not *Switch off it.) (transitive)
• The smell put them off. (not *put off them) (transitive)
• They let him through. (not *they let through him) (transitive)