The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

23
1999). 10 It is easy to demonstrate that the notions etymological source and
derivational input are fundamentally distinct. For example, the English preposition
past (e.g. The horse raced past the barn) is claimed to be related to the verb passed
(Jespersen 1924). Note, however, that the form of the verb is already an inflected
form (-ed [+past]), which is very unusual as a basis for a morphological derivation.
As an additional example consider the Hebrew preposition li-fney (‘before’, ‘in front
of’), which is related to the noun panim (‘face’). Note, however, that rather than being
related to the free form panim (e.g. ha-panim šel ha-yalda (‘the face of the girl’)), lifney
is related to the construct state (CS) form of panim, namely pney (e.g. pney hayalda
(‘[the] face [of] the girl’)). 11 Furthermore, despite its nominal source, li-fney can
combine with its complement forming a CS only: li-fnei ha-mesiba vs. *le-panim šel
ha-mesiba (‘before of the party’), as opposed to the majority of Hebrew Ns for which
construct or free state combinations are interchangeable (Siloni 2002). The noted nonflexionality
of P is arguably closely related to the absence of prepositional
morphology. More specifically, there are no derivational affixes that subcategorize for
Ps, on a par with affixes such as –ness, -ity in English, for instance, which
subcategorize for adjectives to form nouns (e.g. happiness, sincerity). Consequently,
nouns, verbs or adjectives are not derived systematically from prepositions (and vice
versa). 12
Ps can be affixal or null: Whether P can be phonetically null (namely a set of
abstract features) is a matter of analysis: Emonds (1985) argues that all semantic
Cases are achieved through an empty P; Kayne (1984) proposes that structurally
governing Ps, such as the Dative to in English, can be phonetically null; Den Dikken
(1995) defines the circumstances that allow P to be phonetically null. Note that only
the functional heads, C, T, D, are widely assumed to be present in the syntactic
structure, regardless of their phonetic realization. Thus the analyses just mentioned
are consistent with the hypothesis that P is a functional category.
10 Probably due to their various sources, there are languages where (some) prepositions seem to behave
as a subclass of verbs, adjectives or nouns (e.g. Navajo (Hale and Paltero 1986); Hebrew (Siloni
2002); Modern Greek (Terzi 2001)).
11 The p/f alternation is due to Hebrew spirantization, p being the underlying phoneme and f its
allomorph.
12 In some languages such as German and Dutch prepositions are used quite extensively in
compounding with verbs (Zwarts 1997). Crucially though, they never constitute the head of the
compound (unlike lexical categories, which may head the compound they are part of).