Phrasal verbs are pervasive in all registers of English and make this language highly idiomatic. Due to their syntactic, semantic, and idiomatic complexity, however, phrasal verbs present an immense learning load even for advanced learners. Their meaning can usually not be derived from the individual meanings of its elements; they are often polysemous and submitted to contextual restrictions.
From a contrastive point of view, phrasal verbs correspond only partly to similar constructions in the native languages of German and Italian learners. Both learner groups are thus confronted with a...