The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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Directional
(42) be-ta’ut, dan i šalax et ha-yalda el-av i /??el acmo i
By mistake, Dan sent Acc the-girl to-him/to himself
“By mistake, Dan sent the girl to *him/himself.” 31
Recall, however, that while Locative PPs can combine with almost any VP, the
distribution of the Directional ones is semantically restricted (43):
(43) a. Bart ate/crushed/found/invented the candy under the table/*to Tel Aviv.
b. The mouse ran under the table/to Tel Aviv.
Moreover, we find a variety of Locative Ps (on, under, above, etc), not constrained
by the verb (Marantz 1984). In contrast, there are very few purely Directional Ps (to,
from in English, le-/el, me- in Hebrew). Lexical variety is typical of predicates. If
Directional Ps are predicates, it is unexpected that they should be so constrained by the
verb.
Finally, the Directional PP cannot combine with any nominal (44a), unlike the
Locative PP (44b):
(44) a. *ha-yeladim le-hodu nir’u ayefim
the-children to-India looked tired
Intended meaning: “The children (traveling) to India looked tired.”
b. ha-yeladim be-hodu nir’u ayefim
the-children in-India looked tired
“The children in India looked tired.”
Even when the nominal is of the right semantic category (45), it seems that the
Directional PP does not have the same status as the Locative one. This is shown by the
grammaticality contrast in (46), where the PPs are across copula predicates.
31 There is a rather sharp contrast between Hebrew and English (see the gloss). The occurrence of the
pronoun coindexed with the subject is ungrammatical in the Directional construction in English. I will
discuss this in the next section (4.3.3).