The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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1.1 Previous approaches to P
1.1.1 The lexical approach
As already mentioned, since Jackendoff (1973, 1977) P is no longer ignored.
Motivated by the variety of complements taken by Ps (1) and corroborated by the
availability of P-specific adverbials analyzed as the specifiers of PPs (2), P is argued
to be a lexical head, similarly to N, V, A, which projects a phrasal category of its
own, namely a PP, according to the X-bar schema.
(1) a. dan higi’a axarey [ DP ha-mesiba]
“Dan arrived after the party.”
b. dan higi’a axarey [ CP še ha-ša’on cilcel]
Dan arrived after that the-clock rang
“Dan arrived after the clock rang.”
c. ha-kadur hitgalgel el [ PP mitaxat la-mita]
the-ball rolled to under to+the-bed
“The ball rolled under the bed.”
(2) Lisa (*right/straight) found the candy (right/straight) in her pocket.
The categorial features [±V, ±N], proposed originally in Chomsky (1970) for the
three major lexical categories N, V, and A, were extended later (Chomsky 1981) to
define members of the category P as [-V -N], establishing the theoretical status of P as
the fourth lexical category (in what follows I will refer to this approach as ‘the lexical
approach to P’). 2 The categorial specification assumed for P (especially the feature
[-N] which P shares with V) was believed to capture cross-categorial generalizations
such as the ability to assign Case, typical of Ps and Vs. One of the significant
consequences of the classification of P as lexical is that it takes prepositions to be
predicates, namely potential theta-assigners.
2 Jackendoff (1977: 31-32) proposes a somewhat different breakdown into binary specified features,
namely [±subject, ±object]. In his classification P is [-subject +object]. Additional approaches to
feature specification are found in Stowell (1981), Muysken and Van Riemsdijk (1986), Reuland
(1986), Abney (1987), Dechaine (1993), Zwarts (1997). (See Baker (2003) for a critical discussion of
these feature systems, including the standard one mentioned in the main text).