Abstract
This study aimed to examine the distinctive syntactic patterns of phrasal verbs in the text of the Pakistani English novel "Our Lady of Alice Bhatti” written by British Pakistani writer Muhammad Hanif. The study also aimed to analyze the polysemous functions of phrasal verbs in the novel. The study was a mixed method in nature as the frequencies of the particles and the lexical verbs were assessed quantitatively through corpus analysis, and the functions of the phrasal verbs were explained qualitatively. The corpus comprised the text of the novel "Our Lady of Alice Bhatti” written by Muhammad Hanif. Drawing on Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) list of 24 particles, Guilquin’s (2015) list of the twenty frequent lexical verbs, and Brown’s (2002) classification of phrasal verbs, the construction of phrasal verbs and their polysemous functions were analyzed after tagging the data through POS tagger and finding out concordance lines through Anthony AntConc (3.4.4.0) software. The results of the study revealed that 13 particles out of 24 particles from Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) list of particles were present in the corpus. However, only five of the 13 particles had been used frequently by the writer. The results also depicted those 10 lexical verbs from Guilquin’s (2015) list of the twenty frequent lexical verbs were used frequently in the corpus. It was also suggested through the findings that transitive inseparable phrasal verbs had been used more frequently than the other categories. Furthermore, the results of the study revealed that the writer had employed certain structural patterns of phrasal verb constructions which had not been categorized in earlier studies. The significance of the study lies in the fact that it can be beneficial for material developers, lexicographers, and second language learners and teachers. In addition, the suggestions made in the study mark its significance in the field.