Re: (In)transitive verbs

Ph. D. wrote at 2004-02-06 23:33:23 (-0500)
 >
 >
 > I've always considered these "phrasal verbs" to be
 > "verb + adverb" rather than "verb + preposition." To me
 > these samples are two different verbs:
 >
 > 1. Louise looked up Teresa's nose
 >
 > This is the verb "look" plus the prepositonal phrase
 > "up Teresa's nose."
 >
 > 2. Louise looked up Teresa's phone number.
 >
 > This is the verb "look up" (verb + adverb) and the
 > direct object "Teresa's phone number."
 >

Of course, there are those who disagree with the classification of
these words as "adverbs", and prefer to analyse them as "intransitive
prepositions".

  http://abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/lf981212.htm

I'm not sure how this would affect your analysis of their use in
phrasal verbs... I'm not sure that it helps much to try to assign
_any_ particular part of speech to them.