Cost-Free Verb-Particle Placement in English

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This study by Gardner, Hunt, and Liao (2026) investigates the planning costs associated with split versus joined verb phrase constructions (VPCs). It explores hypotheses related to order-specific costs and the influence of idiomatic meaning and lexical frequency on language use. Analysing a corpus of 3,154 transitive VPCs from 520 speakers, the findings reveal that while pronouns tend to be split and complex noun phrases joined, order does not significantly impact pauses. The research...