The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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CS formation is put on ha- (‘the’). 13 If ha- is absent, CS cannot be formed and instead a
Free State (FS) has to be formed with le- in order to check the Case of the nominal. Note
that Ps such as lifney (‘before’), which have the CS suffix -ey, do not admit le- (lifney
(*le)-ši’ur, ‘before (*to) class’). That the occurrence of le- is indeed related to Casechecking
in the FS is shown in (21). The Hebrew P ‘around’ has both the Free form
misaviv (21a), and the Construct form sviv (21b). Crucially, le- is obligatory in (21a), and
ungrammatical in (21b). The contrast in (21) strongly suggests that the function of le- is
related to Case in the FS, thereby supporting the claim that the Dative le- is P C . 14
(21) a. misaviv la-bayit/*ha-ba’it
around-FS to+the-house/the-house
b. sviv *la-bayit/ha-ba’it
around-CS to+the-house/the-house
4.2.2 No PP in the Hebrew Dative construction
Various arguments indicate that the Dative P is not a predicate but rather a Caserelated
P (P C ). Given that, there are two possible representations of the Goal argument
in the Dative construction (22): 15 (As our discussion focuses on the Goal argument of
the Dative verb, in what follows I will examine the lower VP of the VP-shell.)
(22) a. [ VP DP Th [ V PP Goal ]]
b. [ VP DP Th [ V DP Goal ]]
13 This is, of course, an informal state of affairs. The account of how and why ha- resolves the ‘burden’ of
CS formation is beyond the scope of the study.
14 See Appendix to this chapter where it is proposed that the Dative le- is, in fact, either a Case-checker
(P C ) or a Case-marker.
15 I assume that a Dative verb such as give materializes syntactically in a Larsonian VP-shell (Larson
1988a). Thus the external argument (Agent) of a Dative verb is merged in the specifier of the higher VP,
whereas the internal ones (Theme, Goal) are merged in the lower VP. Note, that although the VP-shell
realization might appear to be identical to the syntactic realization which employs the little v projection
(above the lexical projection of a verb), this is not the case. In the VP-shell both the lower and the higher
instances of V are lexical, namely the VP-shell is a projection of a lexical V. Consequently, the external
theta-role (e.g. Agent) is assumed to be part of the verbal theta-grid (see 1.2). In contrast, since the little v
is assumed to be a separate functional (verbal) head, which introduces the external argument of the verb,
this argument is not considered as part of the theta-grid of the verb (Chomsky 1995, among many others,
following Hale and Keyser 1992, 1994). Further, given the conclusion regarding the semantic status of
the Dative P in the previous section, an a priori possible analysis in which the Dative P heads a Small
Clause (SC) (e.g. Den Dikken 1995) seems inappropriate for the P in the Dative construction. It is,
however, plausible for the Locative construction. I will come back to this issue in section 4.4.1.