The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

(46). 28 Summarizing the above, P C is a Case-checking device motivated by the
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The ungrammaticality of (49a) indicates that the P DP sequence is indeed a PP
in Hebrew as well as in Dutch, supporting further the analysis of this sequence in
(thematic) properties of the verb. A verb with an underspecified internal theta-cluster
does not carry the [Acc], and therefore it selects in the lexicon a semantically
appropriate small P (see ahead), which checks the Case of the nominal. To make this
concrete, in what follows I illustrate the lexical marking and derivation of a PP-verb.
The notation used in the illustration is given in (50):
(50) [Case] = the uninterpretable Case-feature of a nominal
[-φ] = uninterpretable φ-features
(For completeness, I specify the EPP feature on T)
The Lexicon marking of a regular transitive verb and of a PP-verb is
schematicized in (51) and (52). It is followed by a concrete example of the Hebrew
PP-verb ma’amin (‘believes’) in (53).
Lexicon marking:
(51) V: θ θ θ 1 θ 2 [Acc]
[+m+c] [-c-m] [+m+c] [-c-m]
28 Once the presence of a PP in PP-verb constructions has been established, the following should be
mentioned. It has been noted that PPs seem to be transparent for c-command within (cf. Pesetsky
1995) (i). More specifically, the pronoun embedded in the PPs is assumed to c-command the R-
expression in the adjunct, inducing Condition C violation (Chomsky 1981, but see Reinhart 1983).
Note that unlike (ia), the preposition in (ib) specifies the locative relation, and therefore it is not P C but
rather P R (the relevant example is due to Idan Landau p.c.):
(i) a. *samaxti ale-ha i ad ha-ne’um šel rina i
[I] relied on-her until the-speech of Rina
b. *dan amad meaxor-av i ad ha-ne’um šel yosi i
Dan stood behind-him until the-speech of Yosi
Even though the described phenomenon does not seem to follow automatically from the theory of P
developed in the study, it is consistent with the uniform classification of P, argued for here. At this
stage I can only speculate that the phenomenon should be attributed to the functional classification of
P. Further research is necessary in order to establish this speculation. (For a radically different account
of the phenomenon see Pesetsky 1995).