Prepositional Phrase

Resumo: O objetivo principal do presente texto é propor uma análise para as construções ditransitivas do português brasileiro (PB), com verbos de transferência/movimento e verbos de criação, cujo objeto preposicionado é introduzido pelas preposições " a " ou " para ". Ao longo do artigo, demonstrarei que as preposições introdutoras de objetos indiretos (OIs) em PB possuem obrigatoriamente um conteúdo semântico. Portanto, diferentemente do português europeu (PE), a variante brasileira não faz parte das línguas que possuem alternância dativa (cf. Larson 1988, Marantz 1993, Pylkkänen 2002), pois a mesma não apresenta núcleo aplicativo em seu inventário de projeções funcionais. Logo, minha hipótese é que as construções ditransitivas do PB apresentam um núcleo funcional PP como parte da estrutura interna do seu sintagma preposicional.
Abstract: The main focus of this paper is to propose an approach to ditransitive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) with dynamic verbs of transfer and movement as well as creation verbs. In BP, the indirect objects (IOs) that accompany these verbs can be introduced by two distinct prepositions: " a " and " para ". Throughout this text, I will demonstrate that these prepositions have a lexical interpretation in BP. Therefore, differently from European Portuguese (EP), the Brazilian variety does not participate in the dative alternation (cf. Larson 1988, Marantz 1993, Pylkkänen 2002), as it does not have applicative heads in its argument structure. Thus, I assume that the ditransitive sentences in BP have a pP head as part of the internal structure of its prepositional phrase.

This paper is an attempt to clarify the status of discourse markers. These lexical expressions have been studied under various labels, including discourse markers, discourse connectives, discourse operators, pragmatic connectives, sentence connectives, and cue phrases. Although most researchers agree that they are expressions which relate discourse segments, there is no agreement on how they are to be defined or how they function.After reviewing prior theoretical research, I define discourse markers as a class of lexical expressions drawn primarily from the syntactic classes of conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. With certain exceptions, they signal a relationship between the interpretation of the segment they introduce, S2, and the prior segment, S1. They have a core meaning, which is procedural, not conceptual, and their more specific interpretation is ‘negotiated’ by the context, both linguistic and conceptual. There are two types: those that relate the explicit interpretation conveyed by S2 with some aspect associated with the segment, S1; and those that relate the topic of S2 to that of S1. I conclude by presenting what appears to be the major classes according to their function.

It has often been remarked that English prepositional phrases elude a simple object/complement vs. adverbial/adjunct classification. Quirk et al. e.g. suggest that it is necessary "to think of the boundaries of these categories as a scale" (1985: 1166) and Biber et al. admit that "[i]n practice it is hard to make an absolute distinction between free combinations and fixed multi-verb verbs" (1999: 403). In the following I will outline a construction-based account of English prepositional phrases which allows a precise formalisation of the various types of PPs, treating them as constructions with varying degrees of schematicity. As I will show, this construction account allows for a straightforward accounting of various, preposition-specific phenomena (do-so ellipsis, prepositional passives. preposition stranding)

A pre-publication draft of this paper can be downloaded from this site.

"This dissertation is about the elements that build verbs, the elements that introduce arguments, and how these elements interact to determine the interpretation of arguments and events. A theory of argument structure is a theory how arguments are introduced syntactically, interpreted semantically, and marked morphologically, and how this information is linked to predicates and their morphological shape. Through a detailed empirical study of Icelandic verbal alternations, this dissertation contributes to a line of research in which much of the work of argument structure is handled by the syntax, the component of language responsible for combining elements into larger structures, rather than a pre-syntactic lexicon.

The major theoretical contribution of this thesis is a syntactic theory of argument structure which is much more syntactically autonomous than its closest relatives. The system proposed shares with construction-based approaches to argument structure the assumption that structures generate meanings independent of the lexical roots embedded in them. That is, lexical roots play a secondary role in effecting argument structures. However, it differs from most syntactic approaches in that the syntax is far less deterministic of semantics, much as late insertion theories of morphology take syntax to underdetermine morphophonology.

In the present theory, syntactic structure may underdetermine interpretation in three ways. First, a functional head may be compatible with multiple ‘allosemes’, or denotations, which are decided post-syntactically on the basis of surrounding material. The categorial v head, for example, may have the interpretation of an activity or a cause (among other possible interpretations), depending on the interpretation of its complement. Second, a DP may be interpreted as an entity, or may be type-shifted to be interpreted as a (stative) eventuality. Third, a lexical root is associated with a web of possible semantic contributions, but the selection from among them is made on the basis of surrounding structure, after such structure has been built."

This paper describes a system that resolves prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity in English sentence process- ing. This attachment problem is ubiquitous in English text, and is widely known as a place where semantics determines syntactic form. The decision is made based on a four-tuple composed of the head verb of the verb phrase, the head noun of the noun phrase,

This is the open access version of my 2007 book (Semantic, pragmatic and discourse perspectives of preposition use:  a study of Indonesian locatives) published by Pacific Linguistics. The book is downloadable for free from the ANU open research repository:
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/146738/1/583_Djenar.pdf

Ce travail s’inscrit dans le cadre du programme minimaliste (PM). Son objectif consiste à analyser quelques aspects morphosyntaxiques de la préposition et du syntagme prépositionnel en amazighe, plus particulièrement dans le parler Ait Izdeg, une variante de la langue amazighe en usage au Maroc central, précisément le sud-est du Maroc, et les versants sud du Haut-Atlas oriental. A l’instar des autres catégories lexicales et fonctionnelles, l'étude de la préposition en amazighe pose plusieurs questions de recherche, à savoir, son statut syntaxique et grammatical, son environnement (complément et nom complété) dans la phrase et sa ressemblance avec la catégorie adverbe. Alors, nous avons jugé nécessaire de réaliser ce modeste travail, d'un coté, afin de fournir des analyses syntaxiques, grammaticales et morphologiques, d'autre coté, pour contribuer à la constitution d'une grammaire bien élaborée de la langue amazighe.

It has been widely assumed that the primary adpositions of modern Indo-European languages constitute a historically identical category, descending from the Proto-Indo-European 'local particles'. I argue that this assumption needs to be revised, because a major branch of the language family, Indo-Aryan, possesses adpositions of unrelated origin. This is not only a question of different etyma, but the New Indo-Aryan adpositions descend from structurally different sources. The ancient local particles, as attested in early Indo-Aryan varieties, combine with local case forms and show a preference for the prenominal position. By contrast, the New Indo-Aryan adpositions descend from nominal and verbal forms heading genitives, and show a propensity for the postnominal slot. Thus, we are dealing with elements unrelated not only etymologically, but also with regard to their morphosyntactic distribution.

The paper presents Slovenian prepositions and prepositional phrases that introduce various causal relations. It includes a contrastive analysis of causal prepositions in Russian and partly in Štokavian. The article sets forth criteria that can be used to define different subtypes of a causal relation and draws attention to the propositional and interpropositional value of specific prepositions in prepositional phrases.

In Bulgarian the negative particles _ni_ and _nito_ may occur inside as well as outside a prepositional phrase, so that _s nito edin den_ and _nito s edin den_ 'not even by a (single) day' appear to alternate freely. The paper discusses the origin and extent of this variation, which proves to be influenced by two facts: the relative youth of the word order with the negative particle inside the prepositional phrase and a preference for placing the particle outside if the object of the preposition belongs to a fuzzy semantic class of weakly individuating nouns that are potential negative polarity items.

We show that by the third century AD at the latest, the choice of case in Latin prepositional phrases had become arbitrary. This is evident from certain Roman brick stamps of the period, where the prepositions ex and de govern the accusative rather than the ablative. Our approach is based on the concept of normativity and its implications for historical linguistics. The findings, based on the analysis of 21 brick stamp texts from the second and third century AD, indicate that there is no direct causal relationship between phonetic, morphological or syntactic factors in the process of morphosyntac-tic change that eventually resulted in the collapse of the Latin case system. The conclusion is that in the third century AD there existed two norms in the language: ex/de…ABL was the only correct expression in higher registers, while ex/de…ACC was widespread and less incorrect in lower registers.

We present a new result of the project AMPER-Can (Multimedia Atlas of Prosody of the Romanic Space in the Canary Islands). Our aim is to show the relationship between intonation, accent and syntagmatic limits in the pretoneme in a corpus of experimental speech (voice male and female) of the Tenerife. The corpus consists of two types of sentences: with a simple NP (head) and a complex NP (head + expansion); in the two cases, we witness the presence of three-syllable words (oxytons, paroxytons and proparoxytons). The syntagmatic limits taken into consideration are: weak (between the head and the expansion of the NP -noun phrase-) and strong (between the NP and the VP -verb phrase- and between the VP and the PP -prepositional phrase-).

Das Präpositionsmuster [unter + SUBSOMAT (+ von / Genitivattribut)] ist in der Forschung bis dato unberücksichtigt geblieben. Viele Merkmale belegen jedoch die Existenz dieses Musters: Seine pragmatische Funktion als Bedeutungsintensivierung der Sachverhaltsdarstellung unter der syntaktischen Form einer zweiten Prädikation, die semantischen Restriktionen und Affinitäten unter den substantivischen Lückenfüllern des Musters, sowie die konstante modal-temporale Musterbedeutung ‚Begleitumstand‘ sprechen für die Bestimmung des Musters als Form-Bedeutungspaar. Untersuchungsgegenstand der vorliegenden Studie ist die korpusbasierte Beschreibung des oben erwähnten Präpositionsmusters, wobei nach einer kurzen Projektpräsentation und Einführung in die Begriffe der internen und externen Musterhaftigkeit auf folgende Fragen eingegangen wird: (1) Lässt sich eine Präpositionsbedeutung innerhalb des Musters erkennen und wie ist diese zu definieren?, (2) Gibt es überzeugende Argumente, die die Nebenprädikativfunktion des Musters untermauern?, (3) Welche sind die Definitionsmerkmale der Slotbesetzung SUBSOMAT auf phonologischer, morphologischer und lexikalischer Ebene? und (4) Wie verhält sich das Präpositionsmuster bezüglich seiner externen Musterhaftigkeit und verbalen Kollokabilität?

We focus here on the use of "absent" in such utterances as "Absent any other facts, there  arises  an  implied  contract". This  usage  is  labelled  “preposition”  in  dictionaries  of  English. The question we ask is whether absent really functions as a preposition in English nowadays. This would involve a change from a lexical category (that of adjective) to a gram-matical one (preposition) –  in other words, a grammaticalization process. After explaining how we collected the data used in this study (section 2), we consider how absent might pos-sibly have grammaticalized into a preposition (section 3). We argue that the change is not so much about the grammaticalization of an individual item as about the emergence of a new construction, a process known as constructionalization. In section 4 other contempo-rary usages of absent are examined, and evidence that the item has acquired prepositional status is adduced. Finally, since we posit matching through analogy with the construction <without+NP> to be key in that process, a comparison between the prepositions without and absent is drawn in present- day English (section 5)

The international conference Complex prepositions in French: Theories, descriptions, applications will explore multi-word expressions that are half-way between the lexicon and grammar such as à travers ‘through’, au bord de ‘on the edge of’, en dépit de ‘in spite of’, par rapport à ‘with respect to’, à l’instar de ‘like’, en ce qui concerne ‘concerning’, etc.
The purpose of the conference is twofold: Firstly, it aims to promote recent advances and to stimulate new research in the area of complex prepositions, whatever the approach, by enabling rich interactions between experts. Secondly, the conference aims to arouse interest and to create a relevant dynamics within several applicative domains (Lexicography, Natural Language Processing, Human and automatic translation, Teaching French as a first, second or foreign language). Insights from such domains are expected to have significant impact both on the theoretical description of complex prepositions in linguistics, and on the exploitation and the dissemination of the outcomes of fundamental research among different audiences. The conference is thus meant to be an opportunity for exchange and debate on complex prepositions between scholars from different disciplines in language sciences and various socio-economic actors dealing with the processing of linguistic data, be they monolingual or multilingual.

This paper takes into account a particular set of Italian Complex Prepositions signaling the agent of an action (e.g. da parte di 'by', a nome di 'by'). Italian exhibits several types of complex prepositions revealing a different involvement of the Agent: in particular, these complex lexemes can introduce and distinguish the participants who i) plan and intentionally conceive an action, ii) perform it and/or iii) have a coercive power over its performing. The contribution aims to: i) distinguish these Italian complex prepositions according to their functions, meanings, and the degree of involvement of the participant they introduce; ii) analyze the collocational features and the syntactic environments where these lexemes occur; iii) individuate possible correlations between their frequency of occurrence and the grammatical value; iv) analyze their diachronic evolution across different historical phases; v) put into relation the synchronic restrictions with the original syntactic environment within which the complex prepositions have been reanalyzed.

The aim of this article is to determine the syntatic-semantic nature of the dative appearing in some constructions of three Latin verbs ('maneo', 'permaneo' and 'remaneo') which share —among others— the semantic notion of “permanence”.
After presenting the data provided by the dictionaries and a corpus study, I propose different semantic and complementation structures for the verbs analysed. A more detailed examination of the structures in which a dative constituent appears, allows us to understand that the verbal notion of these constructions is existential in nature and that the dative can be considered an argument. Accordingly, I propose a predicate frame of the construction as well as a possible process for the setting of this construction.

Resumo: As propostas apresentadas pela gramática histórica e pela gramática cognitiva sobre o surgimento e sobre a intepretação das preposições endossam argumentos cooperativos. Sinteticamente, defendem a ideia das preposições  terem origem semântica espacial que perde seu valor físico e assume interpretações abstratas. Há porém casos mal explicados por esses modelos. Registram-se, assim, situações para as quais devem ser incorporados elementos acidentais à explicação proposta.

Abstract: The cognitive and diachronic explanations about the emerging and the interpretation of prepositions sustain cooperative evidences. In a nutshell, both theories propose a spatial semantic origin for this group of words, whose physical semantic value vanished in favour of abstract interpretations. Nonetheless, there are some examples poorly explained by those frames. Some specific cases signal the necessity of considering accidental constituents in the explanation presented.

This paper discusses preposition (P) omission under sluicing (John talked with someone but I don’t know _ who) and the ability of P to take a clitic pronoun as a complement (We talked about’im), correlated with P-stranding (the ability of P to stay in situ when its complement undergoes movement, Who are you talking with_?) through generalizations that were proposed in Merchant (2001) and Abels (2003a,b) respectively. These studies establish P-stranding as a necessary condition for both phenomena, but I show that the correlations may stem instead from the ability of Ps to project independent Prosodic Words in the P-stranding languages.