The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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It is intuitively clear that the complement of P does not bear a thematic role such
as Theme, for instance, as its verbal counterpart, e.g. the complement of the verb love.
The thematic role Theme refers to a rather general relation holding between the verb
and its argument. Roughly speaking, if a participant in an event denoted by a verb
does not cause a change in the event, but rather undergoes a change, and in addition it
is not necessarily human, the role of this participant is Theme (Carlson 1984,
Chierchia 1989, Dowty 1989, 1991, Jackendoff 1990, Parsons 1990, Reinhart 2000,
among many others). Different verbs (e.g. eat, love, break, built, etc.) assign this role
to their complement. Thus Themes can be eaten, loved, broken, built, etc.. The label
Theme itself does not tell us anything more particular about the argument bearing it.
The relation between a (semantically contentful) P and its complement
resembles the particular semantic relation between a specific verb (e.g. eat vs. built)
and its (Theme) complement, rather than the general thematic relation. In other words,
as opposed to a verb, which is assumed to provide the set of relations in some event
(i.e. theta-roles), a preposition is the semantic relation itself (Tali Siloni p.c., Joost
Zwarts p.c.).
It is commonly assumed that P is a relational category, i.e. it relates two entities.
In light of the above discussion, I propose the following elaboration. The function of
P is to determine the nature of the relation. 20 Thus a locative preposition determines
the relation of its DP complement to some entity (object or event) as a (specific)
location, a preposition like because determines the relation of its clausal or nominal
complement to an event as a cause. Viewed this way, the relation between P and its
complement does not resemble theta-relation. Rather, it is reminiscent of the relation
between a functional head such as T and its VP complement, where the former
determines the relation of the VP to the utterance time. More specifically, T specifies
whether the eventuallity denoted by the verb is before, after or during the utterance
time. Note that the fact that the locative relation is split among a variety of locative Ps
is comparable to the variety of tenses in languages with rich tense/aspect system (e.g.
English, French, etc.) (Julia Horvath, p.c.)
Obviously, the relation specified by a given P is determined by its meaning. In
this respect, recall that being meaningful is fully consistent with being functional (or
20 The most typical relation associated with Ps is the locative/temporal relation, although more abstract
relations such as cause or aboutness are attested too. This study focuses mainly on the locative relation
specified by Ps.