The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation
The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation
. dan higi’a axarey še-ha-ša’on cilcel Dan arrived after that-the-clock rang Dan arrived after the clock rang. (4) a. dan natan et ha-sefer le-rina Dan gave Acc the-book to-Rina Dan gave the book to Rina. b. dan hafax le-yafe Dan turned to-beautiful Dan became beautiful. The occurrence of PPs as across copula predicates (5a,b), similarly to other predicative phrases such as AP (adjectival phrase) or NP (e.g. Dan is nice, Dan is a teacher), may suggest that PPs are (theta-assigning) predicates, i.e. open expressions to be closed by an argument or by a subject (Williams 1980, 1989, 1994 for the former, Rothstein 1983, 2001 for the latter). However, this is not always the case (5c,d,e): (5) a. The book is in the drawer. b. The story is about Bart. c. *The destruction is of the city. d. *The (public’s) belief is in John. e. *The gift is to Homer. PPs do not behave uniformly with respect to binding (6). A pronoun coindexed with the subject is grammatical only when embedded in a locative PP (6a,b). This behavior can be taken to suggest that only a locative PP constitutes a binding domain (cf. Hestvik 1991), as it is a (two-place) predicate. On the assumption that the PPs in (6d,e) are not predicates (see (5d,e)), the contrast between (6a,b) and (6d,e) follows, but the ungrammaticality of (6c) does not. The PP in (6c) is arguably a predicate (see (5b)). (6) a. Dan i put the book behind him i b. Dan i saw a snake behind him i
c. *Dan i talked about him i d. *Dan i believed in him i e. *Dan i gave a prize to him i Prepositional Case is standardly assumed to be inherent (cf. Chomsky 1986), Case assigned to the argument of the Case-assigning predicate. This assumption is reasonable for (6a,b), where the DP is the argument of a locative P, but not for (7), where the DP introduced by P is clearly the argument of the corresponding verb or noun (Chomsky 1981, Kayne 2001): θ Agent (7) a. Jean a fait manger la pomme à Marie. John has made eat the apple to Mary “John made Mary eat the apple.” b. the destruction of the city… θ Theme In addition to the clear cases which indicate that prepositional Case is not always inherent (7), there are also the more complex and intriguing ones (8): (8) a. Dan relies on Mary. b. Homer believes in nothing. On the one hand, the nominal complement of P in (8) seems to be the argument of the verb, rather than of P, suggesting that the Case assigned by the P in (8) is not inherent, similar to (7). On the other hand, the verbs in (8) occur with PPs headed by Ps such as on and in, rather than with the so-called ‘dummy’ of, which may be taken to suggest otherwise. In other words, the thematic relation (or its absence) between P and its complement in (8) is less clear than in (7). Consequently, the identity of Case assigned in these constructions remains a mystery. Given this, it is not surprising that in the past three decades the approaches to P varied fundamentally. P was classified as uniformly lexical, forming a natural class
- Page 1 and 2: Tel-Aviv University The Lester & Sa
- Page 3 and 4: Acknowledgements It has been a long
- Page 5: Abstract 1. Introduction (chapter 1
- Page 9 and 10: (9) The main hypothesis P is unifor
- Page 11 and 12: In the Theta System theta-roles are
- Page 13 and 14: The (semantically limited) distribu
- Page 15 and 16: of the main verb, along lines propo
- Page 17 and 18: 3.2.2 The theta-features (Reinhart
- Page 19 and 20: 5.4.2.1 The status and function of
- Page 21 and 22: 2 1.1 Previous approaches to P 1.1.
- Page 23 and 24: 4 (5) a. dan higi’a axarey ha-mes
- Page 25 and 26: 6 b. misaviv *(le)-ec Hebrew around
- Page 27 and 28: 8 These approaches do depart from t
- Page 29 and 30: 10 heads such as N, V, A do not. 10
- Page 31 and 32: 12 To summarize, as it stands, Grim
- Page 33 and 34: 14 by the corresponding lexical hea
- Page 35 and 36: 16 In the Object Purpose Clause con
- Page 37 and 38: 18 2. The theory of P The main goal
- Page 39 and 40: 20 yes/no questions).This is comple
- Page 41 and 42: 22 (2) Criterion Functional categor
- Page 43 and 44: 24 In various languages some Ps are
- Page 45 and 46: 26 sharp contrast to the core lexic
- Page 47 and 48: 28 lexical, of course) (see the dis
- Page 49 and 50: 30 (iv) Froud 2001 is a psycholingu
- Page 51 and 52: 32 perspective, I will assume that
- Page 53 and 54: 34 Dutch provides an additional arg
- Page 55 and 56: 36 the study). Thus, taking the not
. dan higi’a axarey še-ha-ša’on cilcel<br />
Dan arrived after that-the-clock rang<br />
Dan arrived after the clock rang.<br />
(4) a. dan natan et ha-sefer le-rina<br />
Dan gave Acc the-book to-Rina<br />
Dan gave the book to Rina.<br />
b. dan hafax le-yafe<br />
Dan turned to-beautiful<br />
Dan became beautiful.<br />
<strong>The</strong> occurrence of PPs as across copula predicates (5a,b), similarly to other<br />
predicative phrases such as AP (adjectival phrase) or NP (e.g. Dan is nice, Dan is a<br />
teacher), may suggest that PPs are (theta-assigning) predicates, i.e. open expressions<br />
to be closed by an argument or by a subject (Williams 1980, 1989, 1994 for the<br />
former, Rothstein 1983, 2001 for the latter). However, this is not always the case<br />
(5c,d,e):<br />
(5) a. <strong>The</strong> book is in the drawer.<br />
b. <strong>The</strong> story is about Bart.<br />
c. *<strong>The</strong> destruction is of the city.<br />
d. *<strong>The</strong> (public’s) belief is in John.<br />
e. *<strong>The</strong> gift is to Homer.<br />
PPs do not behave uniformly with respect to binding (6). A pronoun coindexed<br />
with the subject is grammatical only when embedded in a locative PP (6a,b). This<br />
behavior can be taken to suggest that only a locative PP constitutes a binding domain<br />
(cf. Hestvik 1991), as it is a (two-place) predicate. On the assumption that the PPs in<br />
(6d,e) are not predicates (see (5d,e)), the contrast between (6a,b) and (6d,e) follows,<br />
but the ungrammaticality of (6c) does not. <strong>The</strong> PP in (6c) is arguably a predicate (see<br />
(5b)).<br />
(6) a. Dan i put the book behind him i<br />
b. Dan i saw a snake behind him i
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