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Chapter 26 - Prepositions and Particles

Place and Path in English, German, and Dutch

from Part IV - Semantics and Pragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

By
Joost Zwarts
Edited by
Michael T. Putnam  and
B. Richard Page
Michael T. Putnam
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
B. Richard Page
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Summary

Germanic languages heavily rely on prepositions and particles (‘Ps’) for describing places and paths. This category P might be considered as a small class of minor function words, but this chapter demonstrates the richness and variety of this category on the basis of Dutch, English, and German data, focusing on two of their aspects that have not received much attention in the literature: transitivity and complexity. Given that Ps are always based on a spatial relation (between a figure and a ground), it is surprising to see that they can often be used, under specific semantic conditions, without a syntactic object that expresses the ground, even as prepositions. A close look at the variation in formal complexity of Ps shows the same semantic conditions at work, revealing a basic gradient of meaning that cross-cuts the distinction between places and paths and prepositions and particles.

Keywords

prepositionparticleplacepathspacetransitivitypostpositionadverb
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics , pp. 615 - 638
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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