Re: (Separable) suffixes?

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:52:40 EST, MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:

>In a message dated 2/22/2007 12:03:43 PM Central Standard Time,
>eldin_raigmore@YAHOO.COM writes:
>
>
>> But "Put up", as in "Clark put up the Christmas lights", is a phrasal verb;
>> because you can say "Clark put the Christmas lights up", and must say "Clark
>> put them up" and can't say "Clark put up them".
>
>I disagree with your analysis of this example.  I believe that in this case
>"up" is merely a locative adverb filling a semantic slot of "put", not part of
>a phrasal verb.
Is this on the basis that 'put up' is semantically compositional, as opposed
to other phrasal verbs that aren't?  Why is that a useful distinction to
draw, syntactically?

Alex