Phrasal Verbs

English grammar questions, answered by Alan

Moderator: Alan

Locked
User avatar
archk
Member
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 25, 2013 4:00 pm
Status: Learner of English

Phrasal Verbs

Post by archk »

"She is looking forward to a rest."

Wikipedia explains that this sentence is a case of a particle-prepositional phrasal verb where "forward" is a particle and "to" is a preposition

...but I'm confused about what the actual verb of the sentence is. Is it just "looking"? Or should I say "is looking"? Or, because this is a phrasal verb, I shouldn't try to separate the word "looking" from its full phrasal form "looking forward to"? (And thus if I were asked what the full predicate is, should I reply that it is "is looking forward to"?)
User avatar
Alan
Teacher/Moderator
Teacher/Moderator
Posts: 15204
Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2003 7:56 pm
Status: Teacher of English
Location: Japan

Re: Phrasal Verbs

Post by Alan »

Strictly speaking, the verbal elements are 'is looking', where 'is' is the finite verb and 'looking' a present participle.
Locked