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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. 174–213

Intersecting location and possession

| SFL - CNRS/Université Paris-8/SFL | UiL OTS - Utrecht University

The focus of this paper is the possessive relation arising in several configurations between the complement of a locative preposition (u ‘at/by’ and k(o) ‘towards’ in Russian, bij ‘by’ in Dutch and la ‘to/at’ in Romanian, henceforth, u-preposition, heading a u-PP) and another NP in the same clause. I will show that u-PPs can introduce a number of distinct possessive relations in function of the syntactic context and that languages differ subtly in the matter of which such relations are available in which contexts. I will attribute this variation to the different semantic domains of these possessive PPs (locus-modifiers as opposed to event-modifiers) arising from the lexical specification of the possessive relators lexicalized by these prepositions.

Keywords: locative, possession, (in)alienable, part-whole, possessive control
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The syntax of the possessive PP complex
    • 2.1Headedness
    • 2.2Extraction from the possessive PP complex
    • 2.3Adjunct or specifier?
  • 3.The configuration of possession in possessive PP complexes
    • 3.1Small-clause structure
    • 3.2ApplP as the locus of possessive semantics
    • 3.3The possessive PP complex as an intersection of locations
  • 4.The semantics of locative possession
    • 4.1Flavors of locative possession
    • 4.2The spectrum of possessive relations arising with u-PPs
    • 4.3Potential reasons for variation in the use of u-PPs
  • 5.Conclusion and further questions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 24 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00036.mat
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