The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

130
4.3 The Directional P
Zwarts and Winter (2000), following Jackendoff (1983), divide the Directional Ps
into three classes: Source (e.g. from, out of, off); Goal (e.g. to, into, onto) and Route (e.g.
through, across, along, around, over). 23 Note, however, that Route PPs differ in several
respects from Goal and Source Directional PPs: (i) Unlike Goal and Source Directional
PPs, they can occur as subjects (32) (similarly to Locative PPs). (ii) Unlike Goal and
Source Directional PPs which occur only with verbs of motion, Route PPs can also be
used for locating plural or elongated objects (33), or expressing the direction of someone’s
line of sight) (34):
(32) a. Through the town is shorter.
b. *From Paris is nicer.
c. Under the table is a good hiding place.
(33) a. He planted/threw the flowers along the fence.
b. He *planted/threw the flowers to/from the fence.
(34) He looked at the kids through the window.
Finally, in many languages, Locative and Route Ps overlap lexically. For instance,
mitaxat (‘under’) and me’al (‘above’) in both Hebrew and English are either Route or
Locative Ps. 24
Based on the above, in the following discussion, any reference to Directional PPs
excludes Route PPs, unless explicitly stated otherwise. In what follows I will focus on
the Directional P-morpheme le- (‘to’), putting me- (‘from’) aside. I will discuss the
difference between the two in 4.3.4.
23 As noted and illustrated in Zwarts and Winter (2000), many Directional Ps are related to Locative Ps in
systematic ways. Thus over entails above; out of, into and through entail in; from, to and via entail at and
off, onto, across entail on. The denotation of a Directional preposition is derived from the denotation of
the corresponding Locative one using the operator dir in Zwarts and Winter (2000).
24 Which Route Ps are lexically manifested and which ones are not is subject to vast cross-linguistic
variation (Zwarts and Winter 2000).