Patterns of typical usage in "get over with"

This is a separable phrasal verb. Of its hundreds of appearances in the New Model Corpus (NMC), it occurs seven times without something in the middle, an object. Six of these are spoken language, such as:

• How do I get over with you now ? Get over with me ? 

Not even seven swallows make a summer, so let’s move on to the patterns of typical usage. Using this CQL in the NMC

• [lemma = "get"] []{1,7} [word = "over"] [word = "with"]

there are 216 occurrences. The {1,7} tells the concordancer to allow between 1 and 7 words to appear in between the other components. Get it over with has 112 of these, and get this over with 44. And 48 of all occurrences are preceded by let’s. These are patterns of typical usage which learners deserve to have highlighted.

This Wordle was created from the list of node forms that the Sketch Engine generates, minus the lemma GET. It is clear from not only the negative lexical words, e.g. agony, worst, fever, but also the attitudinal words e.g. antsy, fuck, shit that the phrasal verb is a vehicle for expressing negativity. This is despite the lack of inherent negativity in get and over and with.

Among the collocates on either side of it, quick, quickly, soon and hurry are significant. So are wish want sorry and please. 

Through our multiple exposures to this phrasal verb, with its negative objects, the need for speed and a tinge of imploring, we wouldn’t think to use this verb in a jolly way. So, even if the object were a happy event, such as a picnic, wedding, award ceremony, it is smeared by its environment and these events would not be perceived positively here. Due to the lack of attested examples, let us imagine a scenario in which someone might plausibly say, let's get this picnic over with. 

This is semantic prosody – through exposure we are primed to understand the whole meaning, and through using the phrasal verb in its pattern of typical usage, we reinforce its priming in ourselves and our interlocutors.

For our students to have active use of word, they need to know its patterns of typical usage.

Typical language vs cliché

On two recent occasions when I have presented the idea of vocabulary frames (see below) as a path to non-native speakers using vocabulary in more typical ways than they do when they work from an L1 starting point, one person in each setting has politely insinuated that such an approach must produce very clichaic language.

It seems that such people don't realise that language is full of prefabricated chunks. And that's what makes speech and writing sound "natural". What I learn from this is the need to start with different assumptions when introducing the value of prefab language. Vocabulary frames being but one type.

An example of a vocabulary frame is:

X takes priority over Y

But can any noun phrase occupy the X and Y positions?
Up to a point.
People and things, both concrete and abstract, can by X. And Y is limited to things which X would logically take priority over.
So thse are relatively open semantic fields when compared with the next example.

In X regales Y with Z

• regalers are unlikely to be trees
• the recipient is unlikely to be a TV 
• the gift is unlikely to be a window

The semantic category of these three positions is restricted, not by grammar rules, but by semantic preferences. If Z is chocolates, then X is likely to be male and Y female. But if Z is the far more likely stories/tales/adventures, Y is likely to be a group.

The Macmillan dictionary is on the right track with its entry for regale. It says what the word is and does, but does it indicate what we do not do with the word? This is great source of error in non-native language.


Likely = tendency, i.e., that which is probable.

In the slot and filler approach to grammar, the tree regaled the TV with a window is a perfectly acceptable sentence. No syntactic rules are violated. How sad is that!