The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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(Jackendoff 1990). It is also supported syntactically by languages where the Directional
P can (or have to) incorporate into the verb (e.g. German, Dutch, Yucatec Maya), but
the Locative ones never do (Koopman 2000, Van Riemsdijk and Huybregts 2001). 44
Recall that the Directional P in many languages is an instance of P C , namely it has
uninterpretable φ-features that have to be deleted. This can be achieved if P dir checks
structurally the Case of DP int . Thus, the occurrence of P dir forces structural Case
checking (Accusative), overriding the assignment of Locative by the Locative P.
Existential locative constructions (80a) denote a static location, and therefore they
cannot license the (phonetically empty) Directional P . The structure of the prepositional
SC in existential constructions is, therefore, as in (84).
(84) SC PP in the existential construction
…[ PP=SC DP ext [ PP P loc DP int ]]
(corresponds to the SC in (79a))
Since the Directional P is licensed only by verbs that are associated with a path
meaning, a SC PP occurring as a complement to ECM verbs such as consider or want
which clearly do not have path meaning, is predicted to have the structure in (84). As a
result, the Case of the DP introduced by a Locative P should be Locative. This
prediction is born out, as shown in (85):
(85) a. ya xoču [ SC teb y a v komnat-e]
I want you in room-Loc
“I want you in the room.”
b. ya sčitayu [ SC evo v klas-e/na korobl-e]
I consider him in classroom-Loc/on ship-Loc
“I think that he is in the classroom/on the ship.”
In the following section I will take a closer look at modification by Locative PPs.
44 The apparently opposite order of the P-morphemes in the complex preposition into (or onto) (82b) is
either the result of head-movement and left-adjunction of the Locative on to the Directional to, or
onto/into are lexical items in English.