The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

102
(A.6) a. mabat-o nadad
(motion)
glance-his wandered
“His glance wandered.”
b. hu taka bi mabat niz’am (change of location)
he stuck in+me glance furious
“He stuck in me a furious glance.”
c. hu he’if le-evr-i mabat niz’am (direction)
he threw to-side-mine glance furious
“He threw in my direction a furious glance.”
Recall that the structure proposed for PP-verbs is the following:
(A.7) [ VP V [ PP P C be-/al DP]]
This structure underlies the occurrence of the discussed verbs with be-/al as PP-verbs
(e.g. (A.3a)). On the assumption that these verbs can be interpreted also as Directional
verbs, I propose that in addition to the structure in (A.7), they can also occur in the
structure shown in (A.8). Note that both a PP and a DP are appropriate to realize
Location. The former denotes a specific Location (e.g. under the table), the latter
(e.g. the table) is interpreted as Location if introduced by a Locative or Directional P:
(A.8) [ VP V [ PP P dir PP/DP location ]] 67
Consider the following, which supports the Directional analysis of these verbs.
In Hebrew, the Directional P may remain phonetically null, when its locative
complement is a PP headed by a locative P such as under. However, if the location is
expressed by a DP, rather than by a locative PP, the typical Directional P-morpheme
le-/el (‘to’) appears. This is illustrated in (A.9): 68
67 This structure reflects Jackendovian representation of change of location verbs, where a PATH
predicate takes Location as its complement (Jackendoff 1990) (see also chapter 4). The syntactic
hierarchy between the Directional and Locative Ps is argued extensively in Koopman 2000, as well as
in Van Riemsdijk and Huybregts 2001.
68 The fact that the Directional morpheme le-/el (‘to’) does not have to surface if a Locative P is present
may indicate that the relation which licenses the empty Directional P is probably between the
Directional and Locative P-heads. Whether this relation is best viewed as head-movement is a separate
question.