Accusative Case in Slavic PPs (with Boban Arsenijevic)

Volume 2, 2017

We will argue that instrumentals are the mirror image of dative/genitive obliques. We propose that both sets of adpositions/cases are elementary predicates, expressing a zonal inclusion (part-whole/possession relation); instrumentals reverse the direction of the relation with respect to datives/genitives. Our claim is that with-type morphemes provide very elementary means of attaching extra participants (themes, initiators, etc.) to events (VP or vP predicates) – with specialized interpretations derived by pragmatic enrichment (contextual, encyclopedic) at the C-I interface. We will extend our proposal to account for the observation that the instrumentals can be employed cross-linguistically in triadic verb constructions alternating with datives and we will broaden our discussion to account for dative/instrumental syncretism (eventually including DOM objects), arguing that the inclusion predicate (⊆) corresponding to ‘to’ or dative case and its reverse (⊇), corresponding to ‘with’ o...

Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1996

PREPOSITIONS AND MINIMALIST CASE MARKING O. INTRODUCTION Chomsky (1993.: 9) suggests that all structural Case marking be refonnulated in Xbar theoretic tenns, specifically under the Spec-Head relation. In this way, Nominative and Accusative Case assignment are reduced to Spec-Head agreement ofNPs with an AgrS and an AgrO head, respectively. The immediate question that comes to mind is how the structural Case assigned by prepositions can be reduced to this fonnat. Following van Riemsdijk (1990), I will argue that PPs have functional projections. In addition, I will show that F O heads assign Case to NP complements ofpO which have raised to a right-branching Spec-FP position. I will show that the variety of complex prepositional constructions in Gennanic and' Romance languages (circumpositions, left-headed and right-headed "double" prepositions) can be reduced to a single right-branching FP-PP structure, offering evidence for minimalist assumptions about Case marking (checking) as a Spec-Head relation. as the destruction ofthe house, the King ofSweden, the arrival ofthe children, the element ofplays no role in selecting the complement of the head nouns destruction, king, and arrival. Similarly, although less obviously, to can introduce Patients (do damage to the house), Experiencers (It seems to me that. ..), or Goals as in (la). The element by introducing the by-phrase in a passive structure can be equally considered a Case marker, since it introduces Agents (The city was destroyed by the barbarians), Experiencers, (The destruction was felt by the citizens), Instruments (The city was hit by rockets) and Themes (This prediction is entailed by the hypothesis). The Case markers by, ofand to can then be characterized by the fact that they do not exercise selectional orthematic restrictions on the NPs they introduce. This distinction between lexical prepositions and functional preposition-like Case markers is one that is found in many languages (see Kayne 1975 for French d, Guerssel1991 for Berber, Tremblay & Kabhaj 1990 for Amharic). The question now arises as to how these preposition-like Case markers are projected. Let us assume that e.g. (dative) to and (genitive) of head functional projections (FPs) rather than PPs. In a minimalist framework, there are at least two possible analyses for these structures. First, it might be that the head is to the left, and the NP moves at LF to a left-branching Spec-FP in order to check Case as in (2a). Another possible analysis is that the F O is to the right, and that Case is overtly checked by movement to a right-branching Spec-FP and subsequent Spec-Head agreement as in (2b): How do we choose between (2a) and (2b)? In this paper, I will argue that the rightbranching structure for preposition-like FPs as in (2b) allows for a number of generalizations that cannot be expressed under the left-branching structure (2a). The arguments in favor ofthis analysis come from complex prepositional constructions in English, French and Dutch. Complex prepositional constructions include circumpositions (from the top down), left-headed complex prepositions such as out of, into, onto, and right-headed complex prepositions such as down to, up to, away from. The presence ofright-branching FPs in the domain ofPPs allows us to reduce the apparent variety of complex prepositional constructions to a single underlying structure.

Proceedings of ESSLLI workshop on Formal Semantics and Cross-Linguistic Data, ed. H. de Hoop & J. Zwarts, 47-56 , 2005

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I will apply the framework of prepositional aspect, proposed by Zwarts (to appear) for English locative and directional prepositions, to the semantics of Russian and Czech prefixes on motion verbs. Furthermore, I will extend the account of measure phrase modification with locative PPs provided by and to directional PPs. I will show that an apparent aspectual asymmetry between Czech goal-and source-oriented prefixes addressed in , namely that only the latter but not the former can be modified by measure phrases, is more fine-grained in that it follows from the semantics of spatial expressions rather than from an aspectual opposition between these two types of prefixes. Specifically, I will show that there is, in fact, no aspectual difference: both types are telic.

This monograph is concerned with prepositional elements in Slavic languages, prepositions, verbal prefixes and functional elements of prepositional nature. It argues that verbal prefixes are incorporated prepositions projecting its argument structure in the complement position of the verbal root. The meaning of prefixes is based on the two-argument meaning of prepositions, which is enriched with the CAUSE operator, which conjoins the state denoted by the prepositional phrase and the event expressed by the verbal root. This accounts for various effects of prefixation. The book investigates idiomaticity in the realm of prefixed verbs and proposes a novel analysis of non-compositional prefixed verbs. The non-compositional interpretation arises inter alia because of the fact that either the meaning of the verbal part or the meaning of the prepositional part is shifted by means of Nunberg’s (1995) predicate transfer in the course of the derivation. This study also offers a uniform analysis of cases: prepositional as well as non-prepositional cases are treated as a reflection of the operation Agree between Tense-features and phi-features. It presents a new model of prepositional case assignment, in which the type of prepositional case is determined by semantic properties of particular heads of the decomposed preposition. Furthermore, it investigates prepositional movement from diachronic perspective. It is shown that prepositions can be grammaticalised as a functional element of the higher clausal structure.

2015

This article explores the semantic and syntactic properties of the prepositional accusative in the dialect of Bari. Through a comparison with the semantic and syntactic features identified by Torrego (1998) for the Spanish prepositional accusative, we show that Barese a-marked Direct Objects must be specified for [±human] and [±specific] for the prepositional accusative to be licensed. Its structural position is then tested with respect to the position of verb and adverbs, following the comparative analysis of Romance by Ledgeway & Lombardi (2005). These tests reveal that the Barese prepositional accusative occupies a v-VP-internal position, and that “specificity” is chiefly responsible for the a-marking on the Direct Object as a consequence of its raising to the external specifier of vP.

Slovene, 2023

This paper is a corpus-based study of Slavic appositional constructions. Out of material taken from seven Slavic languages, two aspects of the morphosyntax of close appositions in Slavic are considered: case concord and defi niteness marking. The fi rst section of the paper considers the factors that aff ect case concord in appositions in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Czech, Polish, Croatian, and Slovenian. Based on the data of the corpora it is shown that in all seven languages, inherent plurality and frequency of proper names signifi cantly aff ect the probability of concord being present. Moreover, it is shown that the likelihood of concord diff ers across cases, and almost all languages considered follow the case hierarchy GEN>DAT>LOC>INS.

Non-Nuclear Cases, 2014

This paper examines German two-way prepositions governing both the accusative and the dative. It shows that sticking to concepts such as static location (dat) vs change of location, movement or direction (acc), as is still done in traditional grammars, falls short of being descriptively and explanatorily adequate. Although Paul's (1920) dichotomy between emerging relationship (acc) and existing relationship (dat) constituted a major, though hardly noted improvement, it remains counterintuitive in that it characterizes ablative and perlative datives as expressing existing relationships. Shifting to a dichotomy between emerging relationship (acc) and non-emerging relationship (dat) permits to characterize the positively defined accusative as the marked option and the negatively defined dative as the default option, generalizing over all dative subclasses.

2001

PWPL: PLC 34 - University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, 2011

This paper is concerned with prepositional cases in Russian and Polish. It treats prepositional cases on a par with structural cases as a reflection of the operation Agree between -features and Tense-features. The type of the assigned prepositional case is determined by semantic properties of particular heads of the decomposed preposition. There is a correspondence between semantic properties of particular heads and their syntactic features. Syntactic features of heads incorporated into the case assigning head are copied on the prepositional complement by Agree. At the level of PF, these features are spelled out as a case by means of a specific vocabulary insertion rule. This approach derives case properties of simple and complex prepositions as well as adverbial prepositions.

Constructional Approaches to Syntactic Structures in German

Object markers in the form of prepositions such as auf (e.g. with warten 'wait') and an (e.g. with zweifeln 'doubt') in German have hitherto mostly been described as lexical idiosyncrasies of the predicate head they accompany. However, there seem to be reasons to assume that some of them have turned into productive templates whose choice displays semantic regularities. This paper argues that such productive prepositions of prepositional objects in fact constitute argument structure constructions whose sole formal exponent is the preposition in question. What is more, the emergence of such productivity can be viewed as a grammaticalization process. The proposal has repercussions for the discussion of whether argument structure constructions can be considered products of grammaticalization, for the description of similar prepositional structures in other languages, and for the categorization of primary adpositions into classes like lexical vs. grammatical/functional.

2019