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Article published In:
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. 90–134

A minimalist approach to the syntax of p

A Romance perspective

| Universitat Pompeu Fabra

This paper proposes a minimalist analysis of locative prepositions in Central Catalan, from a comparative perspective. Specifically, I claim that certain semantic and syntactic properties that are usually considered part of the field of the extended projection of PPs in cartographic approaches (categories like Place, Degree, K, and AxPart, for example) are in fact properties of the DP in the complement of a preposition. This claim takes the view that adpositions are a functional projection that relates two DPs, the Figure and the Ground, and not a lexical head that projects a functional domain on its own, as Ns, Vs or As (cf. den Dikken 2010; Koopman 2000). The final part of the paper proposes a model to account for the variation that locative prepositions exhibit across Romance languages following the Conjecture of Borer (1984) (known as the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture since Baker 2008). More precisely, I propose a model in which microparametric differences among Romance simple locative prepositions depend on the particular composition of features in p.

Keywords: locative prepositions, spatial adverbials, axial terms, bare singulars, weak definites, boundedness, deixis, variation, Romance languages, Central Catalan
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Prepositions in Central Catalan: A comparative perspective
    • 2.1Spatial adverbials
    • 2.2 Simple Ps in Romance: The case of a and en in Central Catalan
    • 2.3Complex PPs in Central Catalan: Axial terms as nouns
    • 2.4Interim summary
  • 3.The structure of pPs
    • 3.1Theoretical framework
    • 3.2The syntax of DPs
    • 3.3Putting DPs in place
    • 3.4Understanding Axial Parts
    • 3.5The fine structure of adpositions
  • 4.Variation in place
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00034.rea
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