The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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(A.9) a. hu hibit (el) mitaxat la-šulxan
he looked (to) under to+the-table
“He looked under the table.”
b. hu hibit *(le)-šam/*(el) ha-ofek
he looked to-there/to the-horizon
“He looked there/at the horizon.”
In sum, the discussed verbs may occur with either a Directional P or with P C .
The occurrence with the former underlies their locative use, as the Directional P takes
a locative (PP/DP) complement.
II. Default P C in Hebrew
Until now I have discussed the occurrence of P C with verbs whose internal
theta-cluster is underspecified (PP-verbs). This however, does not exhaust the
distribution of P C . In what follows I will discuss two instances of what I call ‘default
P C ’, namely P C that occurs when a verb is unable to check the Case feature of its fully
specified internal argument.
a) Similarly to many other Object Experiencer verbs discussed in Reinhart 2001,
hitkaša be- (‘had difficulty with’) is derived from hikša (‘made difficult’) by a lexical
operation which reduces a [+c] cluster (labeled here R [+c] ). As the result of the
reduction, the [Acc] marking of the verb is eliminated. The theta-grid of the causative
hikša (‘made difficult’) and the output of the reduction which results in hitkaša be-
(‘had difficulty (with)’) are shown in (A.10a) and (A.11a), respectively. Each entry is
accompanied by a relevant example (A.10b), (A.11b).
(A.10)
a. hikša: [+c] 1 [+m-c] Pc al [-c-m] 2 [Acc]
b. ha-more/ha-xom [+c] hikša al ha-talmidim [-c+m] et ha-bxina [-c-m]
The-teacher/the-heat made difficult on the-students Acc the-exam
(A.11) a. R [+c] hikša hitkaša: [+m-c] [-c-m] 2 Pc beb.
ha-talmidim [-c+m] hitkašu ba-bxina [-c-m]
The-students [had] difficulty in+the-exam