Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish

<p>The present thesis focusses on the structure of PP's in English and Polish, and the occurrence of PP's in subject and object positions. The main theoretical references are the X-bar Theory of syntactic categories and the Government Binding framework (GB).</p> <p>A con...

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Bibliografiske detaljer
Main Authors: Jaworska, E, Jaworska, Ewa
Format: Thesis
Sprog:English
Udgivet: 1987
Fag:
_version_ 1826305245684170752
author Jaworska, E
Jaworska, Ewa
author_facet Jaworska, E
Jaworska, Ewa
author_sort Jaworska, E
collection OXFORD
description <p>The present thesis focusses on the structure of PP's in English and Polish, and the occurrence of PP's in subject and object positions. The main theoretical references are the X-bar Theory of syntactic categories and the Government Binding framework (GB).</p> <p>A consideration of English data corroborates Jackendoff's and Emonds' claim that apart from an NP, prepositions can take a PP and an S′ complement or no complement at all, though details of Jackendoff's analysis are revised. Polish prepositions allow the same range of complements, including no complement, although,with a greater variety of complex prepositions and with intransitive prepositions modified by relative and appositive clauses, the P-PP and the P-S′ structures are less common in Polish than in English.</p> <p>Subject and object PP's have so far received little attention. Like PP objects of prepositions, they are used if the intended meaning cannot be expressed by a suitable NP. The appearance of subject PP's in raising and passive sentences poses a problem for classical Transformational Grammar, though not for a slightly revised version of GB – another category-based framework. The analysis proposed here involves a particular view of the representation of Case, and a revised Case Filter. The Case Filter rules out not merely any lexical NP with no Case but any lexical XP which requires Case but has not been assigned Case. Thus, the properties of being an NP and requiring Case are independent of each other.</p> <p>It emerges from the investigation (i) that prepositions in English and Polish are more alike than one might expect, given the obvious differences between the two languages; (ii) that prepositions and PP's are like verbs and VP's – as Jackendoff emphasizes – but in some respects they show greater resemblance to other categories; and (iii) that syntactic categories are less important for the distribution of phrases than is commonly assumed, and that the meaning of phrases is of central importance for their distribution.</p>
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spelling oxford-uuid:f5aaca25-2abc-412c-aa1e-a97f743d885b2022-03-27T12:28:53ZAspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and PolishThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:f5aaca25-2abc-412c-aa1e-a97f743d885bPrepositionsEnglish languagePrepositional phrasesPolish languageSyntaxEnglishPolonsky Theses Digitisation Project1987Jaworska, EJaworska, Ewa<p>The present thesis focusses on the structure of PP's in English and Polish, and the occurrence of PP's in subject and object positions. The main theoretical references are the X-bar Theory of syntactic categories and the Government Binding framework (GB).</p> <p>A consideration of English data corroborates Jackendoff's and Emonds' claim that apart from an NP, prepositions can take a PP and an S′ complement or no complement at all, though details of Jackendoff's analysis are revised. Polish prepositions allow the same range of complements, including no complement, although,with a greater variety of complex prepositions and with intransitive prepositions modified by relative and appositive clauses, the P-PP and the P-S′ structures are less common in Polish than in English.</p> <p>Subject and object PP's have so far received little attention. Like PP objects of prepositions, they are used if the intended meaning cannot be expressed by a suitable NP. The appearance of subject PP's in raising and passive sentences poses a problem for classical Transformational Grammar, though not for a slightly revised version of GB – another category-based framework. The analysis proposed here involves a particular view of the representation of Case, and a revised Case Filter. The Case Filter rules out not merely any lexical NP with no Case but any lexical XP which requires Case but has not been assigned Case. Thus, the properties of being an NP and requiring Case are independent of each other.</p> <p>It emerges from the investigation (i) that prepositions in English and Polish are more alike than one might expect, given the obvious differences between the two languages; (ii) that prepositions and PP's are like verbs and VP's – as Jackendoff emphasizes – but in some respects they show greater resemblance to other categories; and (iii) that syntactic categories are less important for the distribution of phrases than is commonly assumed, and that the meaning of phrases is of central importance for their distribution.</p>
spellingShingle Prepositions
English language
Prepositional phrases
Polish language
Syntax
Jaworska, E
Jaworska, Ewa
Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish
title Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish
title_full Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish
title_fullStr Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish
title_full_unstemmed Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish
title_short Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish
title_sort aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in english and polish
topic Prepositions
English language
Prepositional phrases
Polish language
Syntax
work_keys_str_mv AT jaworskae aspectsofthesyntaxofprepositionsandprepositionalphrasesinenglishandpolish
AT jaworskaewa aspectsofthesyntaxofprepositionsandprepositionalphrasesinenglishandpolish