Phrasal verbs occur frequently in written and spoken English and may be difficult for non-native speakers to understand and produce, particularly when parts of the phrasal verb should be separated and when they should be adjacent. The study reported here analyzes natural data in context to determine whether the word order of the parts of a separable transitive phrasal verb and a direct object are predicted by (1) the length of the object phrase, (2) whether the object is stressed, (3) whether the object represents an idea that has already been referred to, (4) the predictability of the idea represented by the object, given the linguistic and situational contexts, and (5) whether the object is semantically empty. Reference grammars, English-as-a-Second-Language pedagogical grammars, and specialized grammars for two-word verbs are also reviewed for information about how word order with phrasal verbs is being taught. Contains 29 references. (MSE)