PREPOSITION ASSIGNMENT IN ENGLISH 309
- A sentence in which the goal/locative argument of give is not realized syntactically
is, at best,oodd in my dialect, except in special contexts where the goal/locative is
understood (e.g., "What did John give the happy couple?" "Oh, he gave the silver
service.").
- As stated in section 2.3 in the analysis of insert (into) and give (to), the semantic
distinctions between into and to are not relevant at this level of analysis.
- To does not occur predicatively in prepositional functions. An analysis of the
semantic structure of to in other functions (e.g., as a complementizer in He gave
me the package to mail) is a subject for further inquiry.
- The fact that a similar statement cannot be made with regard to sentence (53) is
due to the inherent directionality of temporal statements.
- The native speaker judgments are based on a limited sampling of Sproul Hall ten
ants, UC Davis.
- Similar interpretations of salience relations for soup and entree in sentence (63) in
the next section make this solution seem plausible, especially in view of the fact
that soup and entree are themes involving no volitional DO operators. Any vary
ing interpretation of salience would be informed by clause position.
- I am indebted to Robert Van Valin and David Wilkins for this semantic structure
which developed from lengthy discussions oí for.
- Dowty (125) discusses the possibility of + and -volitional achievements (for
example, accept — [DO (x, [BECOME have' (x,y)])] — and receive — [BE
COME have' (x,y)]) but does not formalize a distinction between the two achieve
ment sub-classes. FVV (69) also discusses the difference but does not include a
+volitional achievement in its classification system. The acceptability of sentence
(62), where purposive, non-predicative for occurs with an achievement structure
(leave) demonstrates the necessity of positing two sub-classes of achievement
verbs: [DO...BECOME stative' (x)] and [BECOME stative' (x)].
References
Allerton, D.J. 1982. Valency and the English Verb. London: Academic Press.
Bennett, David 1975. Spatial and Temoral Uses of English Prepositions: an Essay in
Stratificational Semantics. London: Longman.
Brugman, Claudia M. 1980. Story of Over. Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Univ. of Califor
nia, Berkeley; published by Garland Press, New York.
Caramazza, Alfonso & Grober, Ellen. 1976. "Polysemy and the Structure of the Subjec
tive Lexicon". In Rameh, ed., 181-206.
Creswell, M. 1978. "Prepositions and Points of View". Linguistics and Philosophy 2.1-
41.
