The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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(iii) P-stranding
Finally, consider a very different kind of evidence, which can be easily construed
as an additional argument for the claim that the Dative le- in Hebrew is not a syntactic
head P. Armon-Lotem (2000), studying attrition in the early stages of bilingual
development, compares the use and misuse of resumptive pronouns and stranded
prepositions in L1 Hebrew and L2 English. The findings reported in her paper show that
resumptive pronouns are susceptible to early attrition, namely they are dropped and P-
stranding is used, even though it is ungrammatical in Hebrew:
(28) a. ha-seret še-hitkavanti le…
the-movie that-[I] meant to
“The movie that I meant…”
b. ha-makom še-halaxnu el…
the-place that-[we] went to
“The place we went to…”
The drop of resumptive pronouns and use of stranded prepositions exemplified
in (28) excludes Goal arguments of Dative verbs (Indirect Object, in Armon-Lotem’s
terminology). As pointed out by Armon-Lotem, the findings make clear that “…the
status of Dative Goal arguments is so different that it does not let itself to attrition as
easily as the PPs do.” (p.65). Following Hornstein and Weinberg (1981), stranding in
English occurs upon reanalysis between two syntactic heads, V and P. If, as argued for
here, the Dative le- is not a syntactic P-head, it cannot be reanalyzed with the verb and
stranded.
Note that although the Dative le- is not a P-head, it is possible to use a single le- in
the following conjunctions:
(29) a. natati matanot le-[yeladim] ve-[yeladot]
[I] gave presents to-boys and-girls
b. natati matanot le-[yeladim yafim ] ve-[yeladot nexmadot]
[I] gave presents to-boys beautiful and-girls nice
c. natati matanot [le-yeladim (yafim)] ve-[le-yeladot (nexmadot)]
[I] gave presents to-boys beautiful and-to-girls nice