Adpositions, particles and the arguments they introduce

Abstract

Spatial relations, and certain other relations among entities and events, are expressed in many languages by caseless, tenseless words that grammarians often call prepositions or postpositions (adpositions). In this article I make some general observations about these words and their role in providing thematic content and licensing to DP arguments. I refer generally to adpositions and related complementless particles as members of category P, and compare the category P to V, suggesting that they share some similarities in argument structure, but that the temporal dimension of V distinguishes it fundamentally from P.

Reflexive verbs in Hebrew: Deep unaccusativity meets lexical semantics

“…These constructions appear with the clitic -st, as in (32). On the analysis of Wood (2014) the subject of PPs, the figure, is introduced by a functional head p merging above the PP, following independently made suggestions along similar lines (van Riemsdijk 1990;Rooryck 1996;Koopman 1997;Gehrke 2008;Den Dikken 2003Svenonius 2003Svenonius , 2007Svenonius , 2010. In this system, p assigns the thematic role of figure and Voice assigns agent.…”

Verbal particles inside and outsidevP

“…As pointed out above, verbal particles, especially locative verbal particles, have commonly been assimilated to adpositions in a number of languages, with which they are often, though not always, homophonous, and have been analyzed categorically as Ps (e.g., Emonds 1985;den Dikken 1995;Matushansky 2002;Svenonius 2007). Particles that apparently behave as phrases have accordingly been analyzed as "intransitive" adpositions (Klima 1965;Emonds 1985;see Horvath 1981 for this view of verbal particles in Hungarian): PPs that contain nothing beyond a P head.…”

Latin datives with prefixed verbs and beyond: A view from the theory of applicatives

“…14 An analysis along those lines of example (10) In the above tree the prefix de-'downward' is originated as a preposition heading its own PP, which is embedded under the eventive head v. The PP articulates a Figure-Ground schema (Talmy 1978, Svenonius 2007, Metellus conveying the Figure of movement and the ablative monte 'the mountain' conveying the Ground. The whole configuration is an unaccusative one, since it lacks an external argument, the v head being interpreted as a GO/BECOME operator.…”

“…I first note that I follow a line of analysis from Jackendoff (1983) through Koopman (2000), Svenonius (2007Svenonius ( , 2010 and den Dikken (2010), among others, in assuming two different abstract prepositions for the articulation of directional and stative notions: Path and Place, respectively. In particular, locative denotations correspond to a PlaceP and directional ones correspond to a PathP, which in turn embeds a PlaceP: At the core of the present proposal is the assumption concerning the refinement of the syntactic structure of locative PPs carried out by Noonan (2010: 161-195) and Terzi (2010: 196-224).…”