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Into adpositions: New formal perspectives on the structure of the PP and its variation
Edited by Víctor Acedo-Matellán, Theresa Biberauer, Jaume Mateu and Anna Pineda
[Linguistic Variation 21:1] 2021
► pp. 11–45

Prepositions with CP and their implications for extended projections

| University of Tromsø

In some limited cases, English allows a particular preposition to combine with a certain kind of subordinate clause, as exemplified by in that in “I take the proposal seriously, in that I loathe it”. In contrast, Norwegian systematically allows prepositions to combine with subordinate clauses (as in Det resulterte i at vi vant, literally “It resulted in that we won”). I argue that the English case should be handled as the subcategorization for a certain complement class by a particular lexical entry, while the Norwegian case indicates that the extended projection of clauses can continue up to the preposition. This highlights an important difference between lexical selection and extended projection, revealing a hitherto underappreciated source of parametric variation, and sheds light on several properties of extended projections as well as of prepositions. Specifically, the extended projections of N and V may “converge” at P, challenging the notion of extended projection as being confined to a single lexical category.

Keywords: Preposition, extended projection, selection, functional hierarchy, Norwegian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Three kinds of phrases
  • 2.Data
    • 2.1English in that
    • 2.2English P-CP more generally
    • 2.3Norwegian P-CP
    • 2.4Infinitive CPs with P
      • 2.4.1Infinitive CPs with P in Norwegian
      • 2.4.2Infinitive CPs with P in English
    • 2.5Particles
    • 2.6Interrogative CP
    • 2.7Norwegian differs syntactically from English
  • 3.The analysis: Mixed extended projections
    • 3.1S-projections
    • 3.2Hierarchy of domains
    • 3.3Edge functions
    • 3.4HoPs as directed graphs
    • 3.5Mixed extended projections
    • 3.6Mixed extended projections as graphs
    • 3.7EPGs as finite state networks
    • 3.8Acquisition of EPG
    • 3.9The extended projection of P
    • 3.10Revisiting the HoD
  • 4.Alternatives
    • 4.1Are Norwegian CPs DPs?
    • 4.2Is there a null D and/or N in the P-CP construction?
    • 4.3Summary
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00032.sve
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