The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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Both (22a) and (22b) are possible syntactic realizations of the Goal argument
across languages. The difference between them is the presence vs. the absence of the PP
(see the discussion of the realization of the Goal ([-c]) in 3.5.2). Languages such as
Russian, which do not have a Dative preposition, and mark the Dative Case
morphologically on the DP are the most natural candidates to utilize the option (22b).
Hebrew, which is the focus of the study, presents an intriguing case, as it has a
distinct Dative P-morpheme le- (’to’), and therefore one could expect that its Dative
construction would have the structure in (22a). However, in what follows I will argue
that the Dative le- is a lexical prepositional affix on D, and does not project a PP.
Therefore in the Hebrew Dative construction the Goal is realized as a DP (22b). The
distinction drawn here is between syntactic affixes which instantiate functional heads
such as T (as in Lasnik’s (1999) chapter 5) and affixes which are adjoined presyntactically
to a functional/lexical head and are not projected syntactically.
Before I present the evidence in favor of this claim, I would like to emphasize that
analyzing the Dative le- in Hebrew as an affix, rather than as a full syntactic P-head, is
fully consistent with the functional classification of the category P. As opposed to the
members of the core lexical categories, N, V and A, which are not affixal, members of
the functional ones can be affixal or even phonetically null (see 2.1). 16 Further, since the
Dative P has no semantic contribution, it is not forced to be analyzed as a syntactic head
projecting an XP (Chomsky 2001). It may, however, be forced by the language specific
ones. As will be shown below, the Dative preposition to in English is not affixal, as
opposed to its Hebrew counterpart. 17
Consider now the evidence which supports the claim that the Dative le- in Hebrew
is not a syntactic P-head, and therefore there is no PP in the Hebrew Dative
construction.
16 But see the analysis of the Hungarian infinitival (‘roll-up’) clusters in Bartos (to appear), where certain
Hungarian verbs, referred to as ‘light verbs’, are viewed as suffixes.
17
There are additional factors which should be considered in order to determine whether a given language
realizes the Goal argument as a PP or as a DP. In addition to the affixal status of the prepositional
morpheme mentioned in the text, the existence of morphological Case in a given language is probably
another relevant factor. It may also be relevant that there are languages which mark Goals in the Dative
construction only morphologically, without an overt P (e.g. Russian), whereas others (e.g. German) have
both the prepositional and the morphological options. Bayer, Bader and Meng (2001) argue that nonprepositional
Goal arguments in the Dative construction in German have an additional functional layer
KP, which has structural effects similar to those of a PP.