No hesitation at the choice point: verb–particle placement is cost-free in production

Journal article

Using 3,154 tokens from American English, we test whether optionality in verb–particle placement increases speech-planning cost, measured as pre-verbal silence. Tokens were coded for object properties, idiomaticity and verb frequency. We find that pre-verbal silence does not differ between split (pick the book up) and joined (pick up the book) orders. While idiomaticity favours the joined order, it does not raise planning cost. Verb frequency shortens pauses only in fast speech, suggesting predictability acts lexically, not structurally. Choice symmetry does not lengthen pauses. We therefore fail to reject the null hypothesis: the two orders are equally easy to plan. This null result, from tests designed to detect a theoretically predicted effect, aligns with other evidence that syntactic choice imposes no production cost. We conclude that variation in verb–particle constructions (VPCs) is cost-free; distributional differences reflect object properties and idiomaticity, not derivational markedness.

Authors: Gardner, MH; Liao, XL

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: Language and Cognition
• Volume: 18
• Article number: e33
• Publication date: 2026-05-15
• Acceptance date: 2026-01-19
• DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2026.10081
• EISSN: 1866-9859
• ISSN: 1866-9808
• Language: English
• Keywords: syntax; language variation; verb–particle constructions; English; speech planning