The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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The phenomenon of PP-verbs, although widely attested, has received very
little attention in the literature. The following alleged empirical observations are
probably the main reason for the neglect of these verbs: (i) It seems to be
unpredictable whether a certain two-place verb is a DP-taking verb or a PP-verb in a
given language and across languages. Thus, as noted in Neeleman (1997), see and
watch take a DP, while look and glance take a PP. The verb betray in English is a DP
taking verb, whereas in Hebrew it is a PP-verb bagad be- (‘betrayed in’). (ii) The
choice of a particular P for a given PP-verb is rather idiosyncratic. Although you
believe in someone both in English and in Russian, you depend on someone in
English, but ‘from’ someone in Russian (zavisit ot, ‘depends from’).
The goal of this chapter is to explain the phenomenon of PP-verbs, thereby
shedding more light on one of the functions of P.
The chapter is structured as follows: Section 3.1 discusses two previous
approaches to PP-verbs and shows that none of them can explain the phenomenon of
PP-verbs. In section 3.2 I advance the hypothesis that the set of PP-verbs is defined
thematically. The specific implementation of the hypothesis within the Theta System
of Reinhart (2000, 2001, 2002) leads to the explanation of the phenomenon in 3.3.
The validity of the thematic definition of the set of PP-verbs is argued for in section
3.4. Section 3.5 provides an account of the cross-linguistic variation attested by PPverbs,
on the basis of data from Hebrew, Russian and English.
3.1 Previous approaches
To explain the phenomenon of PP-verbs implies answering the following
question: Why are there verbs that realize their internal argument as a PP, rather than
a DP? We can break up this question into two related ones, posited from two different
angles, the verbal angle and the prepositional one:
1. What do PP-verbs have in common, which gives rise to the occurrence of a PP?
2. What is the function of the Ps occurring in PP-verb constructions? 2
2 Which prepositions occurs with which verb is a separate and independent question, not addressed in
this study.