The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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Therefore I delay the answer to this question until section 3.4, and proceed with the
first one.
3.2.4 Why a PP?
Actually, the answer to the question why the underspecified clusters are realized
as a PP (rather than a DP) follows from (23c) (repeated below for convenience) and
few standard assumptions.
(23) c. If the entry includes both a [+] cluster and a fully specified cluster
[/α, /-c], mark the verb with the [Acc] feature.
Based on (23c), and given the hypothesis that the internal argument of PP-verbs
is not fully specified (19), these verb are not marked with the [Acc] feature.
[Acc] in the Theta System corresponds to the ability of a verb to check the
(uninterpretable) Case feature of a DP. Thus (23c) (i.e. [Acc] marking) is consistent
with the more familiar implementation of Case-checking assumed in the Minimalist
framework (cf. Chomsky 1995, 2001). More specifically, being marked with [Acc] is
parallel to having a full set of uninterpretable φ-features, carried by the verbal
functional head v (v* in Chomsky 2001). 18 Note that the class of verbs marked with
[Acc] in Reinhart (2000) coincides with the class of verbs whose lexical projection is
assumed to merge with v (the locus of the uninterpretable φ-features) in the
Minimalist framework, the so-called transitive verbs (e.g. kill, kiss, love). 19
Given this, let me summarize the relevant assumptions (i)-(iv) and their
consequence (v):
(i) The Case feature of a nominal is uninterpretable, and therefore has to be deleted
(Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001).
(ii) [Acc] is the ability of a verb to check the Case feature of a DP, therefore only
verbal entries which are lexically marked with [Acc] can check the Case of a DP (the
above discussion).
18 For a more elaborated view of [Acc] see Reinhart and Siloni 2003.
19 The notion ‘transitive’ in the present context should be taken in its narrow syntactic sense. It refers to
two-place verbs whose internal argument is realized as a DP, distinguishing between verbs such as kill,
love, on the one hand, and rely (on), believe (in), on the other hand. In its broader (semantic) use, the
term ‘transitive’ refers to two-place verbs with an external argument and an internal one, whether direct
(DP) or indirect (PP).