The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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3.5 PP-verbs cross-linguistically: the issue of divergence
Since the analysis of the phenomenon of PP-verbs relies on the thematic
structure of the verbs, and given the standard assumption that the theta-grids of
concepts do not vary dramatically across languages (Chomsky 1981), one would
expect that the groups of PP-verbs across languages should overlap notably. This,
however, does not seem to be the case.
Taking the random sample of 70 PP-verbs in Hebrew to be the reference set,
only 30 of them surface as PP-verbs in Russian, and just 20 of them are PP-verbs in
English. The question arises what underlies this variation. Is it in any way systematic?
Focusing on Hebrew, Russian and English, I will show that there are two major
sources of variation: (i) Some non-identity between the verbal concepts across
languages; (ii) The way the [-c] role is realized.
3.5.1 Realization of verbal concepts
Even though the thematic structure of concepts is universal, their realization is
not. In other words, verbal concepts across languages may seem identical, while in
fact, they are not (Tanya Reinhart p.c.). For example, several meanings, distributed in
some language between distinct verbal concepts, can be collapsed in another language
in one concept. This gives rise to some non-identity between concepts crosslinguistically.
The non-identity may be very noticeable, or less so. If the collapsed
meanings are rather distinct, the non-identity between the ambiguous verbal concept
in one language and the distinct ones in the other is easily detectable. If the collapsed
meanings are closely related, the non-identity will be less noticeable.
Recall that the intuition which led me to the hypothesis that PP-verbs assign an
underspecified internal role was that these verbal concepts are semantically less
transparent than verbs which assign fully specified internal roles. Thus, given two
languages, if in one of them a certain verb carries several meanings, whereas in the
other each meaning is carried by a different verb, the verb in the former is less
transparent, than each of the two or three corresponding verbs in the latter.
The less transparent verbal concepts are the most natural candidates to be
analyzed as PP-verbs, namely verbs which assign an underspecified internal thetacluster.