Variation in P Comparative Approaches to Adpositional Phrases

Variation in P is an essential follow-up to the seminal proposals of the generative tradition regarding prepositional syntax. Recent research shows that prepositional phrases have a complex internal structure, and that the grammatical encoding of locative meaning has its own place in universal grammar. The papers collected in the first part of this volume not only test these proposals against new comparative data, but also shed light on the relation between spatial expressions and other semantic relations like possession. The second part of the volume explores the role of prepositions in non-spatial environments as well as in more general phenomena like verbal affixation, ellipsis, and complementation.

By drawing on evidence from less studied languages, and by considering prepositional syntax in interaction with clausal syntax as well as within prepositional phrases, Variation in P refines and develops theories introduced by previous generative studies.

Jacopo Garzonio is Assistant Professor at the University of Padova.

Silvia Rossi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.

Variation in P: An Introduction
Jacopo Garzonio & Silvia Rossi

Part I: (Micro)variation in PPs: Refining the fine structure of PPs

Chapter 1: Locatives in Shonda and Luganda
Pavel Caha & Marina Pantcheva

Chapter 2: Case Variation in Eastern Polynesian Spatial PPs
David Medeiros

Chapter 3: AxParts and Case in Complex PPs: Microvariation in Italian dialects
Jacopo Garzonio & Silvia Rossi

Chapter 4: At the doctor's: prepositional 'where' in Southern Italian dialects
Nicola Munaro & Cecilia Poletto

Part II: Ps beyond PPs: Variation in P-related phenomena

Chapter 5: P and the Emergence of the Infinitival Left Periphery
Joachim Sabel

Chapter 6: Mutation in Spatial Deixis (Dx): "PPs" in Blackfoot and Plains Cree*
Tomio Hirose, Rose-Marie Déchaine, and Heather Bliss

Chapter 7: Cross-linguistic variations in the layered structure of PP: Evidence from PP internal NP-ellipsis
Hisako Takahashi

Chapter 8: Comitative P
Anna Maria Di Sciullo, Marco Nicolis & Stanca Somesfalean