prepositional adjuncts

[Mike Maxwell]

Ulrich Koch wrote:
> for languages like German, there is a further argument
> in favor of the head-marker analysis of some "PPs":
>
> It is commonly assumed that in a PP, the preposition selects
> the case of its NP sister.  This actually works for many
> prepositions, but there are counter-examples:
>
> (1) Hans verlaesst sich auf einen Freund.
>     Jack relies    self on  a-ACC friend
>     `Jack relies on a friend.'
> (2) Die Loesung  beruht auf einem neuen Ansatz.
>     The solution rests  on  a-DAT new   approach
>     `The solution is based on a new approach.'

I don't know enough about German to know whether this is relevant, but in
English there is a strong distinction (pre-theoretically) between the
situation where a verb takes a PP complement, and the situation where a verb
takes a particle (i.e. a bare preposition) plus an NP.  "Look up" is a
typical stereotypical minimal pair ("look up the answer"/ "look up the
chimney").  While English doesn't have the overt case distinction, one might
imagine that there could be such a distinction in languages with "real" case
morphology.  ("Real case morphology" is like "real grammars", I guess :-).)
In other words, the particle + NP construction might show one case (or the
case might depend on the verb), while the PP construction might show a
different case.

                                         Mike Maxwell
                                         Summer Institute of Linguistics
                                         Mike_Maxwell at sil.org