Download functional interpretations

25.05.2007
FUNCTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS:
BORDERLINE IDIOSYNCRASY IN PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES AND OTHER
EXPRESSIONS
Andrew McIntyre [email protected]
1. Introduction
There is a type of prepositional phrase which not only specifies a spatial relationship between the located object (LO)
and reference object (RO)1, but also forces entailments drawing on knowledge about such things as the canonical
function of an entity or the stereotypical interactions which it has with other entities. Often, this restricts the range of
possible meanings of the PP and hence the contexts in which it may appear. For instance, (1) means that Gertrude was
seated in frontal proximity to the piano, but forces the additional entailment that she is looking at it, playing it or
otherwise interacting with it. Replacing before with in front of renders this interaction optional. before is impossible in
contexts like (2) which exclude such an interaction. (3) and (5) give examples of 'functional' uses of prepositions. on in
(3) entails that Cuthbert is in a position to use the train in its canonical function as a means of transport. Since the train
in (4) cannot thus function, on must be replaced by in. In (5), the preposition with a bare noun complement forces the
inference that Nelly is on the school premises in order to participate in educational activities. If we provide school with
an article, this implication does not necessarily hold, and the bracketed phrase becomes acceptable.
(1)
Gertrude was sitting before the piano.
(2)
Everyone in the room was fixated on the television. Fran and Stan were on the sofa, Gordon was sitting near
the fire and Gertrude was sitting {in front of/*before} the piano, her back resting on the keyboard.
(3)
Cuthbert is on the train.
(4)
Cuthbert is {in/*on} the old train on display in the museum.
(5)
Nelly is at/in school (*to pick up her little sister).
Apart from PPs, we also study a number of other constructions displaying interpretations arguably related to the ones
just seen. One such construction is known as the 'verb-particle combination', 'phrasal verb' or 'particle verb', where
information about the functional or associative relationships between objects is often enlisted in deducing the type of
entity which is the implicit RO of the prepositional relation expressed by the particle. For instance, in the VP put a
record on, the implicit RO of on must be the type of object on which the record can fulfill its function and on which
records are canonically found, namely a record player. Likewise, many denominal verbs are specialised to situations
involving typical uses of a noun. For instance, our knowledge of the things denoted by cage and gaol tells us that they
are designed for accommodating animals and prisoners. When these nouns are converted to verbs, their object selection
properties are sensitive to this knowledge. One can cage lions and gaol criminals, but one cannot *cage the lions' food
or *gaol a new prison warder. Also, the recoverability of an ellipsed verbal argument is often restricted to cases where
its an entity is in a functional or stereotypical relationship to a surviving argument. Thus, pour a glass (unlike pour
something into a glass) is usable only if the implicit substance is something for which a glass is designed, viz. a drink
(cf. logically possible, but unacceptable cases like *I got dishwashing liquid and pouted the glass.
Various linguists in personal communication suggest that functional interpretations 'come from the context'. I later
note that functional interpretations of some expressions indeed result from context-based inference, there is ample proof
that this is not always the case and thus that the existence and distribution of functional readings is not a trivial problem.
It is circular to claim that the functional construal of the RO in I put a record on comes from the context, since put on
only allows contexts where this construal is possible, i.e. one where the LO is put in a position where it can be used in
its normal function (e.g. put clothing on, put makeup on, put the kettle on). Likewise, the fact that I put the plate before
Ann suggests that Ann is meant to interact with the plate might be thought to emerge as a trivial implication of the
context being described, at least if I conceed that putting something in someone's frontal proximal region is usually
meant to instigate an interaction. However, the relevant use of before (studied in 6.1) is specialised to contexts where
the LO and RO interact in some fashion, while its near synonym in front of is not, cf. I put Dave's plate {in front
of/*before} Ann while I wiped the table in front of Dave. The interactional entailment does not come from the context in
which before appears; rather the preposition insists that it be embedded in a context where interaction is possible. One
perhaps genuine instance of a contextually inferred functional reading is the intuition that the PP in Ann is at her desk
(without further context) implies that she is using it as a work surface. This can be seen as a rather obvious type of
contextual guessing based on our knowledge of the kinds of things which one normally does in the at-region of a desk.
However, this reasoning appears to be equally valid in a context where at is replaced by near, but such a context
excludes the functional reading. We must find out why. Furthermore, the functional interpretation of at the desk is a
'weak' functional reading, being easily cancelled in a suitable context: During the office party, Dave stood as far away
as possible from Ann, who was sitting at her desk, drinking vodka and talking to Fritz. This raises the question of why
the functional reading of at the desk can be nullified by the context when that of before a person cannot. This essay tries
to come to grips with all these issues.
1 Linguists are fond of coining new names for the arguments of prepositions. I arbitrarily chose 'reference object' for the argument mapping onto the
syntactic complement of prepositions and 'located object' for the external argument, ahead of terms like 'landmark', 'ground', 'relatum' for the former,
and 'trajector', 'figure', 'locatum', 'theme' for the latter. I use these terms even in abstract domains where the located object is neither located nor an
object in any strict sense (e.g. I was on time).
A. J. McIntyre
Let us proceed as follows. Section 2 characterises the superficially different interpretations studied here as a natural
class whose unifying property is that they can be inferred from the meaning of an expression no matter what context it
appears in. Section 3 presents and analyses a large set of (mainly English, French and German) data exhibiting such
interpretations, covering a diverse group of grammatical constructions and giving special attention to hitherto unknown
facts. Collecting a large set of data in one place is worthwhile because it allows the evaluation of generalisations made
here and in future work, and gives us an idea of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon and of numerous subtleties
associated with it. Section 4 notes that functional and related readings are either (a) obligatory and lexically stipulated,
(b) contextually inferred or (c) impossible, and formulates generalisations which predict the distribution of these three
cases; the generalisations are in large part derivable from other principles. Section 5 discusses the presence of
functional-interactional readings in over/under and their absence in above/below (cf. I washed it under/*below the
shower), which elude the generalisations in section 4 but turn out to follow from differences in the spatial readings of
the respective prepositions. Section 6 gives case studies of expressions which force obligatory functional or
interactional readings. Lexical entries are formulated which clarify the problems surrounding the nature of the lexical
stipulation of these readings and the semiproductivity of the constructions exhibiting them. Some general properties of
such stipulations are discussed. Section 7 makes some suggestions for the treatment of functional and related readings
in two semantic theories.
2. Terminological preliminaries: Types of PS interpretations
'Functional' is used here neither as an opposite to 'lexical' nor in the extended sense of 'functional concepts' like support
or the exertion of force (e.g. Vandeloise 1986, Garrod/Sanford 1988). Rather, I use 'functional' in the non-technical
sense 'pertaining to the function/purpose of an object'. Thus, put on a record is said to be specialised to a functional
reading because it is only usable when the record is put in a position where it can fulfill its function. Likewise, (6)(a)
suggests that Dave's presence at the school is connected to its function as an educational institution. I will argue that
functional readings should be seen as part of a bigger phenomenon which manifests itself in various interpretations
beside functional ones. For instance, the PP in (6)(b) forces an interactional reading (which is optional with in front of).
It need not invoke knowledge about the function of the paper. Rather, Ann is expected to do something with the paper,
look at it, or otherwise interact with it. While one might have expected (6)(c) to be usable of any situation where a chair
is lower than a table (an expectation which is fulfilled if we replace under with its near-synonym below), its contextfree interpretation involves a coercion or metonymy in which it is the seat of the chair which is under the tabletop. This
special interpretation is not functional in my sense, since neither object needs the other to function. Rather, the PP has
what I will somewhat loosely call a stereotypical interpretation: it refers to the memorised, standard configuration
which auotmatically comes to mind if one imagines a vertical alignment between chairs and tables. A further instance of
a stereotypical interpretation is the compound in (6)(d), which is specialised to naming a memorised subinstance of the
denotation of the parallel NP dark room.
(6)
a. Dave is at school today. (→he is participating in educational activities there)
b. He held the newspaper before Ann (→she was meant to do something with it)
c. the chair under the table (→the seat of the chair is under the tabletop; the chair has its legs on the ground)
d. darkroom (a dark room which is used for developing photographs)
More subtle characterisations of the interpretations in (6) could be given, but what interests us is their unifying
properties. I will use the term privileged status (PS) interpretations as a superordinate term for these interpretations. To
establish their natural class status, we need the notion of the logically possible denotation of the expression, by which I
mean the set of all possible interpretations an expression could have had if it had not been confined to a PS reading. The
unifying feature of the various types of PS interpretations is that they are the subset of the logically possible denotation
of an expression which matches or invokes situations in the speaker's world knowledge which preexist any influence
which the context may have. In other words, PS interpretations are inferences that can be made about the logically
possible denotation of an expression irrespective of the context in which it is embedded. I clarify this with reference to
(6). Given the logically possible denotation of the PP in (6)(a), something like ‚located at some school’, we could make
innumerable inferences about Dave's motivations for being there. He could be there to meet friends or because he works
there as a cleaner, and so forth. However, our knowledge that schools are teaching and learning institutions means that
the entailment that Dave is there in the capacity of a student or teacher has a privileged status among the possible
inferences, since one needs no context beyond the logically possible denotation of the PP for it to be a salient
possibility. Assuming the logically possible denotation of before Ann in (6)(b) locates the paper in her intrinsic frontal
region, we could infer e.g. that the paper is meant to hide Ann or that it obscures her vision, inferences which might be
are possible if in front of replaces before. However, (6)(b) only licenses the entailment that Ann was meant to read, or
otherwise look at and manipulate the paper. This entailment has a privileged status while the others do not because, for
it to be a salient inference, we need no context other than the PP and the LO and the knowledge that the area in front of
a person is one where the person can interact with an object. An inference in which the logically possible denotation of
an expression is assumed to refer to its memorised or canonical (i.e. stereotypical) instance is the kind of inference we
would predict to exist if there is any reality to the idea that PS readings are those inferences which are possible
irrespective of the utterance context. (6)(c) could refer to non-standard situations such as a chair lying on its side
supporting an inverted table, but we need a certain amount of context to license this interpretation (the chair under the
table in the junk pile). However, we know that the most normal vertical relationship between chairs and tables is one in
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A. J. McIntyre
which the chair's seat is under the tabletop and neither object is inverted. We need no further context for this to be a
possible inference, and simply assume it to be the case unless the context suggests otherwise. Finally, the logically
possible denotation of the compound in (6)(d) would encompass any room which is dark. A room could be dark for any
number of reasons, but our world knowledge offers only one pre-existent instance of a dark room: a room whose
darkness allows photographs to be developed.
contraction of a preposition and a definite article receives an indefinite semantics and where non-contracted forms are
bad. Importantly, where it is phonologically possible, cliticisation is obligatory with PPs with a functional reading, cf.
(14).
(12) a. ins 'in' +das 'neuter accusative singular definite article' = ins
b. an 'at, on' +dem 'non-feminine dative singular definite article' = am
(13) a. ein Mann {im/*in dem/*in einem} Anzug 'a man in a suit'
b. der Junge wurde {zum/*zu dem/*zu einem} Mann 'the boy became a man'
(14) a. sie ist in dem Theater 'she is in(side) the theatre (building)'
b. sie ist im Theater 'she is in theatre, in the theatre business'
For more such examples and information on the semantic peculiarities of contracted prepositions, see Haberland 1985
and Bosch/Guerts 1990:196f. We return to small PPs in section 6.2.
3. Data
This section presents a large selection of constructions exhibiting PS interpretations, collected over a number of years
from linguistic literature and my own observations. I chose to err on the side of comprehensiveness in order to assist
future research where PS readings are relevant and to put readers in a position to assess my claims. It will not hinder the
understanding of sections 4 through 6 if section 3 is read selectively.
3.1.2. PPs which force/allow a PS reading
3.1. PPs
In this section we present a hopefully representative collection of PPs with PS interpretations. Before beginning, it will
be necessary to remark briefly on a syntactic peculiarity often found with PP's with functional readings.
3.1.1. A note on small PPs
Functional PPs in Romance and Germanic languages often assume the form of the constructions in (7). These consist of
a preposition and a noun which unexpectedly appears without a determiner. These constructions will be called 'small
PPs' (cf. 'small construction' in Sadler/Arnold 1994, who apply the term to English prenominal adjectives, which, they
argue, have both syntactic and lexical properties). The term is shorthand and does not necessarily have theoretical
status. Small PPs often force a functional reading where a normal PP does not. (8) and (9) illustrate this. More
illustrations appear throughout this essay.
(7)
at school, in church, in store, off stage, on guitar, on cd
(8)
a. he played a good solo on piano vs. there is a vase on *(the) piano
b. the concert hall staff are on *(the) stage cleaning up after the concert
(9)
a. er
bezahlte
die Ware
mit
Kreditkarte
(German)
he
payed.for
the product
with (by) credit card
b. er
wies sich aus
mit
*(einer) Kreditkarte
he
identified himself
with
a
credit card
It is not clear what licenses the lack of determiner in small PPs. It is often not the noun, there being many cases where
the bare N only occurs inside a small PP with a specific preposition, cf. (10). There are prepositions which almost
exclusively form small PPs. One such is French en 'in', whose complement noun appears with an article only in a few
fixed phrases (en l'air, en l'absence de). There is a division of labour (or suppletion?) in which en forms small PPs,
while its synonym dans 'in' does not. Examples are given in the next section. On en see Franckel/Lebaud (1991) and
Jones (1996:402-6).
(10) she is in bed (despite: *she enjoys bed; *she was resting on bed)
she is at sea (despite: *she liked sea, *sea is good for your health)
they went to hospital (despite: *hospital was not pleasant)
Small PPs are semiproductive. We find many contrasts of the type to hospital vs. *to clinic, but we should try to find
regularities in small PPs, since there are non-negligible numbers of them in e.g. English, French and German, and since
some groups of small PPs are formed by what seem to be productive, transparent processes.
Boertien 1997 assumes without comment that small PPs are P° projections and compounds. I know of no good
evidence for or against this. In McIntyre (ms.), the occurrence of small PPs in morphological structures is noted. They
occur e.g. as front forms in compounds (in-house entertainment, online banking, out-of-body experience), in forming
exocentric compounds (afterbirth, underground) and as stems of complex verbs (German auftischen "on-table", 'serve
up', einsargen "in-coffin", 'put in a coffin'). It is no surprise that one finds French en, but not dans, in prepositioncomplement structures inside complex expressions such as complex verbs (encaisser (<caisse) 'put in a box, encase',
embarquer (<barque 'boat') 'embark') and [N[PN]]N structures (arc-en-ciel "arc-in-firmament", 'rainbow'). The idea that
there is a lexical P+N template which may be instantiated within certain word formation constructions or else in a
syntactic PP is worthy of fuller assessment.
Although many small PPs force a functional reading which is not present with the full PP, and although the
preposition's lexical entry seems to be responsible for determining which nouns can enter the construction, most small
PPs discussed herein inherit the semantics of the preposition in its normal uses. As Bart Geurts (p.c.) notes, we hardly
want to assume that the at in (11) has two different lexical entries.
(11) a. they took him to hospital (functional reading of hospital; he must be a patient)
b. they took him to the hospital (functional reading optional; he could be the cleaner there)
Small PPs are less widespread in German than in English. There may be a reason for this: competition from another
source. Some German prepositions allow cliticisation/incorporation of an adjacent article, sometimes with a lexically
listed portmanteau morph as a spellout of the sort familiar from cases like won't <will+nt, cf. (12). PPs with cliticisation
do not always correspond semantically to parallel PPs without, cf. cases like e.g. (13), where what is formally a
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Most treatments of functional uses of prepositions (e.g. Becker 1994:55, Becker et al 1988:19, 43f, 55, 57f; Cuyckens
1994:190f, Herskovits 1986:154f, Herweg 1989:112, 116 Jackendoff/Landau 1992:116f, Pustejovsky 1995:231f,
Wesche 1987:389f) are very brief. The only article-length presentation of such data of I know of is Hottenroth (1981),
which gives a detailed description of Italian a, suggesting that all of its uses are functional. It seemed worthwhile to
gather a large sample of data in one place. I do so in this section, emphasising data not previously discussed. More data
involving the prepositions over and under is saved for an analysis of those prepositions in section 5.
A. Institutional PPs: A subtype of functional readings of PPs is the institutional reading, where the RO is a building.
The LO is in the RO in order to participate in activities for which the RO was designed. English has several small PPs
which force the institutional reading. Below I list examples, with indications of the incomplete productivity of the
construction and tests confirming the functional reading. Some (mainly American) varieties reject some of the small
PP's accepted below; the judgements reflect my (Australian) variety.
(15) in/at/to college; at/to/*in university; in/at primary school; at/in highschool; in/to/*at court; in/at/to church;
to/in/*at hospital; *at/*in/*to clinic; in/to/*at gaol/prison
(16) Wayne is in gaol {for blowing up the Institute for Semantics/*to visit his aunt}.
We have {some fine products/*four cash registers/*new staff} in store.
They are in/at *(the) school to pick up their children.
Note that John is at school has two readings, a momentary one in which he is asserted to be on the school premises at
utterance time, and a habitual one, in which it is merely asserted that he is still enrolled in the school. One may be
tempted to derive the habitual one from a theory of generic statements. The temptation vanishes when we note various
idiosyncratic contrasts like in school, in church (momentary) vs. in college, in the church (momentary or habitual).
One sometimes finds institutional PP's where the preposition does not exhibit its usual spatial meaning. In such cases,
the PS readings are obligatory. German an (primary spatial use: contact with or proximity to an outer surface) forces an
habitual insitutional reading with public institutions as RO, where LO is a person employed there. Thus, er ging ans
Theater means 'he went to work (got a position) at the theatre'. German auf has a basic sense 'on the upper surface of the
RO', but can also express presence in public buildings, provided the LO relates to the building in terms of its designated
function. The nouns which can be the RO of auf in this use are idiosyncratically restricted. Subject to idiolectal
variation, auf can be used with nouns such as Bank, Universität, Post 'post office', Kirche 'church', Rathaus 'town hall',
Gerichtshof 'courthouse', Schule 'school'. Examples of nouns which do not standardly occur with auf are Supermarkt,
Kino 'cinema', Laden 'shop'. A related use is the small PP auf Lager 'in the stores, in stock'. The remarks made about auf
apply equally to its Dutch cognate op, except that it licenses a rather different set of nouns as RO (Cuyckens
1994:190f). Contrasts like (17) show the obligatoriness of the functional reading:
(17) a. Die Arbeiter brachten das Geld auf die Bank. 'The workers brought the money to the bank.'
b. *Die Arbeiter brachten die Leiter auf die Bank. 'The workers brought the ladder to the bank.'
In institutional goal readings where auf is impossible, German often uses in (literal gloss: 'in', idiomatic gloss: 'to'), cf.
in die Kneipe gehen 'go to the pub' and ins Kino gehen 'go to the cinema'. The use of an interiority relation as a distal
goal is not normally licensed in non-institutional contexts: neither ins Haus gehen nor its translation go into the house
can be used if the theme's trajectory begins an appreciable distance from the house. This, coupled with the English use
of to ahead of in in parallel contexts, suggests that this use of German in is licensed by some stipulation rather than an
being a spatial use overlaid with an implicature arising from our knowledge of the function of institutions.
According to Becker et al. (1988:43f), Italian a 'at' and small PPs with in 'in' have institutional readings. In seems to
occur with people more immediately associated with the institution in question. Here are some examples:
(18) in teatro 'in the theatre' (of employees); al teatro (of spectators); in prigione 'in prison' (of prisoners); alla
prigione (of visitors, staff); in ospedale 'in hospital' (of patients, staff); all' ospidale (of visitors)
Examples of French small PPs with en with an institutional reading are en prison 'in prison' (said of a prisoner), en
pension 'in a boarding house' (of a boarder), cf. Franckel/Lebaud (1991:59).
One should be careful in assessing institutional uses of at in uses other than small PPs. Garrod /Sanford (1988:158f)
assume that the basic meaning of at is functional and claim that being at the supermarket implies that one is there to
shop. I query this. It is correct and important to observe that a context-free case like he's at the supermarket implies the
functional reading (certainly more strongly than he's in the supermarket), but the reading can be easily overridden with
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Functional Interpretations
A. J. McIntyre
more context e.g. in cases like the workers are at the supermarket repairing the ceiling or there's a party at the office.
In view of such cases, as well as other purely spatial uses of at (the plane refuelled at Sydney, I'll meet you at the
fountain), it is incorrect to assume a functional interpretation as a necessary or central condition for at.
B. Objects as RO, people or events as LO: At least in a minimal context like Fred was at the piano, we would
probably understand that Fred intends to use the piano in its normal function. Other ROs conforming to this
generalisation are artefacts like stove, table, piano, computer, banking machine. This type of functional reading of at is
commonly noted in the literature (e.g. Garrod/Sanford 1988, Herskovits 1986, Wesche 1987, Pustejovsky 1995:231f),
but it must be emphasised that the inference is weak and easily overridden with a more explicit context, supporting
Cuykens' (1984) suggestion that it is an implicature. Analogous remarks can be made for German an, which in the
relevant sense roughly corresponds to at. Like at, an does not always have a functional reading (e.g. Li 1994:73). We
must abandon any assumption that the functional readings of some uses of at and an are part of their basic definition. It
is unlikely that they must be stipulated in their lexical entries. However, an unsolved problem which warns us against
trivialising funtional readings of at/an is that of why some prepositions with a similar spatial semantics (near, bei)
nullify functional readings. However, an unsolved problem which warns us against trivialising funtional readings of at
is that of why its near-synonym near negates the functional reading: ich arbeite beim Tisch and its translation I worked
near the desk strongly suggests that the desk was not involved in the work (cf. also Herweg 1989:112, 116.)
A neglected use of before which forces a functional or interactional interpretation is seen in (19). Here cannot be
coincidental. It must result from intended interaction between LO and RO. If before is replaced by in front of, the
interaction is not a necessary condition for using the prepostion.
(19) a. Bob sat before the piano/computer/television (→he intended to use or do something with it)
b. Linda sat before the fireplace (→there is a fire in it)
Some functional uses with artefacts as LO and either an agent or an event as RO are exemplified in the PPs with on in
(20). With musical instruments, we find small PPs, but they are restricted to basic-level instruments (on piano/*on
Steinway) and at least one is idiomatic (on vocals). With full PPs, on can occur with rare or subordinate-level exemplars
of the object classes in question. It seems that the uses in (a) and (b) (directly translatable by German auf 'on') have an
event as LO which is perhaps conceptualised as being 'supported' by the artefact.
(20) a. Grandma did a solo on the saxophone/synthesiser/bluesharp/Gibson doubleneck/melotron
b. Meryl wrote the letter on the computer/word processor/PC.
c. Gerard was on the telephone inquiring about tickets for the play.
Finally, a number of small PPs show canonical interactions between people and artefacts:
(21) the child is in bed (cf. *there is an ant in bed); they are on stage (performing/ *cleaning it); get Basil off stage!
they are at table (antiquated)
C. Animate/personified RO: English before, in a previously unstudied use as a near-synonym of in front of with a
stationary RO, i.e. when it is not the opposite of after, always forces the interpretation that the LO and RO interact. Tom
stood before the headmistress obligatorilly entails that the LO is not only located within the frontal proximal region of
the headmistress, but interacts with her in a manner affected by her authority. This usage, further illustrated in (22), is
productive with ROs which are beings vested with power (divine beings, rulers, courts, or other people with authority in
the current context) or, by metonymy or personification, certain artefacts (e.g. altars, thrones). The LO-RO interaction is
always influenced by the authority or power exerted by the LO. This entailment is not a trivial implicature based on the
frontal proximity meaning of before, witness its absence with in front of. Note also that German vor 'in front of, before'
does not force entailments of the kind found with before, except in the isolated small PP vor Gericht 'before the court'.
(22) a. Wayne stood before the judge (=in the presence of the judge in his/her official capacity)
b. Wayne stood in front of the judge (=was located in front of the judge, e.g.at a concert)
c. bow down/kneel/tremble before someone, come before the judge/court/tribunal/headmaster
In a second use of before, the RO is an animate being and the LO is an object. The relationship is typically one in which
the RO uses or otherwise interacts with the LO. Often the relationship is one of temporary possession, so that x is before
y entails y has x. (23) entails that Edith is expected to have or to do something with the cake (e.g. eat it). Again, this is
not a simple inference based on what is normally the case if a cake is put in the frontal proximity region of someone.
Consider (23) in a context where several people are seated at a table, on which there is little room, apart from an empty
space in front of Edith. Here it would be reasonable to imagine someone temporarily putting the cake down in front of
Edith without intending that she do anything with it, cf. (24). This scenario is possible with in front of but not with
before. Observe also the contrast in (25), where before, unlike in front of, forces the deliberate reading of drop, since
this is the simplest way in which the relationship between the food and the dog as meaningful, not just a purely
incidental spatial location.
(23) Edward put the cake before Edith.
(24) Edward put Margot's cake {in front of/*before} Edith while Margot was still finishing her main course. (* if
Edith is not intended to do anything with the cake)
(25) a. Fred dropped a piece of meat before the dog. (Fred deliberately drops it, intending to feed the dog)
b. Fred dropped a piece of meat in front of the dog. (Fred might have accidentally dropped it)
It is interesting to note that for and its e.g. German and French translations für/pour historically go back to an
expression meaning 'in front of' and are thus simply grammaticalised variants of the type of meaning expressed by
before. One may speculate that (temporary and permanent) possession can be a type of PS relation involving a person.
D. Objects interacting with other objects: French small PPs involving object interaction are seen in the minimal pair
below, adapted from Becker (1994:64,fn):
(26) a. une lampe en vitrine "a lamp in display window" (functional reading: the lamp itself is on display)
b. une lampe dans une vitrine "a lamp in a display window" (the lamp is not necessarily on display)
English small PPs seem to be rarer in this class. That the PP in the bottle of wine on ice qualifies as functional and
'small' (although ice is a mass noun and thus capable of articleless use in other contexts) is seen in the unacceptability of
*the empty bottle is on ice or *the ice tongs are on ice. (27), however, shows a related, productive use of small PPs with
on where the LO is an abstract object like music or information. Entities which do not properly belong on the
information carrier appearing as RO are unacceptable with the small PPs. These small PPs all translate into small PPs
with auf 'on' in German.
(27) a. she has the Beethoven Violin Concerto on cd/disc/record/album/cassette
b. she's got the concert on video/dvd/film
c. she has a copy of Basil's autobiography on disc/cd-ROM
d. there is a virus/ scratch on *(the) disc
e. she heard it on tv/on radio; they performed on radio
E. Vehicles: French small PPs with en 'in' with vehicles as RO force a functional reading in which the LO intends to
use the vehicle: en voiture 'by car, in the car', en autobus 'by bus'. The phrase la tour du monde en ballon "the world
tour in balloon" (heard in French television) suggests that the model is productive. Where mere presence within the
vehicle is meant, dans 'in' must be used instead. En is also used where no interiority relationship subsists in cases like en
vélo 'on a bike'. This is either an analogical extension or a survival of an older use of en in the sense 'on' (Grévisse
1964:934).
English uses on with larger vehicles (e.g. on the bus, ship, ferry, boat, aircraft, spaceship; *on the car/
rowboat). As mentioned above, this on cannot be used with decorative vehicles (*we got on the old train on display in
the museum). Jackendoff/Landau (1992:117) suggest that the use of on may be due to the conceptualisation of large
vehicles as platforms. This is surprising since large vehicles are not discernibly less container-like and more platformlike than small ones. Presumably, we must resign ourselves to treating this as an at least partially idiosyncratic
diachronic relic. The fact that those vehicles which allow on also allow on board invites the speculation that the
construction arose diachronically via loss of board in contexts like on board the ship etc.
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3.2. Particle verb interpretation
The recovery of the implicit RO of a particle verb can make use of at least two strategies. One is to assume that the
implicit entity is part of a PS situation, exploiting knowledge about functions of objects or their stereotypical locations
(cf. McIntyre 2001:C2.2, Härtl/Witt 1998, Wunderlich 1983). Examples are given in (28). In other cases, the RO is
coindexed with some entity in the context, as in (29). Most particle verbs only allow one of the strategies, although (30)
gives some cases where -in my variety, at least- both strategies are equally possible, leading to an ambiguity.
(28) a. He went to the table and put the kettle/record/ his hat on (on the stove/turntable/head, not on the table)
b. Still holding the toolbox in one hand, she pulled out the plug (out of a socket, not out of the toolbox)
c. While at the washing line, he took his jumper off (off himself, not off the washing line)
(29) a. He went to the suitcase and put the cassette in (in the suitcase, not in a tape recorder)
b. She opened a drawer and took out the video (out of the drawer, not out of a video player)
(30) a. They went over to the truck and lifted the engine in (either into the back of the truck or the part of the truck
where the engine goes)
b. When he opened the box, his false teeth fell out (out of his mouth or the box)
In German, the PS interpretation strategy is far more frequent. Below are some examples where the implicit RO is
interpreted such that the particle verb implies the initiation or termination of the use of an object in its typical function
(examples a-e) or of a stereotypical spatial relationship between an LO and its associatively related RO (f-i).
(31) a. eine Leiter anstellen "a ladder on-stand", 'lean a ladder on some vertical surface (in order to use it)'
b. ein Lineal anlegen "a ruler on-lay", 'position a ruler in measuring something'
c. einen Verband anlegen 'to put on a bandage'
d. eine Folie/eine Platte auflegen 'put an overhead slide/a record on (a projector/turntable)'
e. die Angel auswerfen "the fishing line out-throw", 'cast the line'
f ein Zahn/ein Haar ist ausgefallen 'a tooth/hair has fallen out' (RO can only be the environment where it
belongs, i.e. the mouth/head, not e.g. some container)
g. das Kücken ist ausgeschlüpft "the chicken has out-slipped", 'the chicken has hatched'
h. einen Stecker/ Brief einstecken "a plug/a letter in-stick", 'put a plug in (a socket)/ a letter in (a postbox)'
i. eine Sohle/einen Film einlegen 'to put a sole in (a shoe)/a film in (a camera)'
A preliminary assessment of the difference between English and German particle verbs is that the RO of German
particle verbs is interpreted through recourse to functional/associative information more often than that of English
particle verbs. However, we have not seen all German particles. German has not only a stock of monomorphemic
particles often formally identical to prepositions (e.g. aus 'out', auf 'on, up', durch 'through') but also a large group of
'double particles' (McIntyre 2001) consisting of one of the simple particles plus a deictic element such as (he)r 'hither',
hin 'hence', d(a)r 'there'. Examples are (he)raus 'out (of it/them/there)' and d(a)rauf 'on there'. The closest English
6
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A. J. McIntyre
counterparts are structures like on there, in there or therein, herewith. When double particles are used as complements
to a verb or when they form particle verbs (we can remain neutral on the existence or nature of this distinction), they fail
to force a functional interpretation, as the following minimal pairs show:
(32) a. die Platte auflegen 'put the record on (a record player turntable)'
b. die Platte drauflegen 'put the record on something given contextually'
(33) a. die Kassette einlegen 'put the cassette in (a tapedeck)'
b. die Kassette reinlegen 'put the cassette in (something given contextually)'
German double particle verbs differ from single particle verbs in the presence of a deictic component which has the
effect of forcing the implicit RO to be understood as a specific token rather than generically, which perhaps explains
why the double particle verb ROs are supplied from the context rather than through speakers' world knowledge
(McIntyre 2001:C2.2). Since double particles force a search of the immediate context, it is unsurprising that the RO
does not display a functional connection with the LO if the RO is not present in the context. However, note that the PS
interpretation is not forced even if the context does contain a relevant reference object. The following sentence contains
two potential antecedents with which a double particle RO could be identified, but there is no preference for identifying
the RO with the PS antecendent (Rekorder).
(34) Auf dem Tisch standen ein Aktenkoffer und ein Rekorder. Er legte eine Kassette hinein 'On the table stood a
briefcase and a tape recorder. He put the cassette in it'
interpretation such that it is confined to a Source RO reading (dust the shelf) and a Goal LO reading (dust the figure
with gold dust). Here the verb is specialised to normal situations (cleaning the unwanted dust from/ applying decorative
dust-like substances to something). The productivity of Source verbs is very low because an ambiguity between a
Source and Goal reading would be confusing. The cases in (37) where this reading does occur involve inalienable
possession cases where the Goal reading is highly abnormal.
A difficulty is that one hears many denominal verbs which do not receive a PS interpretation. Protestors who glued
garden gnomes to the steps of Australia's Central Bank were reported to have gnomed the bank, and there was a brief
craze in which Sydney youths forked peoples' lawns (adorned them with plastic forks). These are hardly canonical uses
of gnomes and forks. Clark/Clark 1979 give more such cases. These authors and Aronoff 1980 offer theories of how
such verbs are interpreted. What remains unclear is the extent to which the functional and stereotypical specialisations
in the denominal verbs described earlier in this section should be seen as idiosyncratic. They are so frequent that one is
tempted to see them as a regular pattern. On the other hand, the denominal verbs I have seen which are specialised to a
PS interpretation strike one as familiar, suggesting that they are lexically listed despite their regularities. Jackendoff
(1997:115f, 123-126, 231f) makes the same point, but takes PS interpretations to be symptomatic of the partial
irregularity and semiproductivity of conversion. Non-PS uses of denominal verbs tend to sound more inovative.
However much background knowledge of the gnoming incident recounted above is presupposed, *they banked the
gnomes at midnight would never be acceptable, since the PS use of bank (with money and similar objects) blocks the
innovative reading. Such blocking effects are not uniform. Clark/Clark (p. 785f) attest uses of bottle with human objects
in the sense 'attack with a bottle', despite the normal functional reading bottle the beer, suggesting that denominal verbs
can reflect the use of a thing in a non-canonical purpose. In view of the facts I have seen and the vast amount of data
which an accurate survey of conversions must consider, I merely conclude that some denominal verbs are specialised to
PS sitiuations, while others have a wider range of uses.
3.3. Denominal verbs
There are many denominal verbs, whether derived by conversion or overt affixes, which are restricted to contexts where
they refer to the typical use of the noun appearing in the verb stem. Some examples appear below, with indications of
the restriction of the verbs to functional/stereotypical contexts.
(35) a. pot a plant/*a bunch of flowers/*the soil
b. pocket the money (*in the trousers lying on the sofa)
c. shelve the books (for permanent storage, not e.g. using the shelf as a surface for depositing books
temporarily while answering the telephone2)
d. file the document/*the paperclip
e. hospitalise a patient/*a nurse
f. butter the bread/*the frying pan (e.g. using butter noncanonically as a lubricant)
g. clothe the child/*the washing line
h. crown the monarch/*the display cabinet
i. drug the athlete/*the medicine cabinet
j. postcode the letter/*one's address book (=fill in a forgotten postcode)
k. grease the engine/*the carpet (accidentally)
In (36) we see a similar pattern with a set of German particle verbs where the verb stem is converted from a noun which
is semantically the RO of the prepositional relation expressed by the particle. The objects must be things for which the
RO normally functions as a container. (Cf. parallel prefixal structures like imprison a thief/*a prison warder.)
(36) a. einsargen "in-coffin", 'put in a coffin' (of dead people, not e.g. possessions buried with them)
b. eindosen "in-jar", 'put in a jar' (of e.g. fruit, not nonconsumables put in a used jar for storage)
Denominal verbs have been discussed by e.g. Aronoff (1980), Clark /Clark (1979), Farrell (1998), Hale/Keyser (1993),
Harley (1999), Kiparsky (1997) and Stiebels (1997). Kiparsky (p.482) makes a similar point to mine in suggesting that
'if an action is named after a thing, it involves a canonical use of the thing'. Monotransitive denominal verbs could be
subclassified according to various parameters, including (a) whether the verb stem incorporates a LO or a RO and (b)
whether the RO is a Source or a Goal (for further classes, see Clark/Clark 1979). (35)(a-e) exemplify Goal RO verbs
and (f-k) Goal LO verbs. Here are some Source verbs:
(37) a. Source LO verbs: gut/scale the fish, skin the animal, stone the fruit
b. Source RO verbs: mine/quarry the metal, shell the peas,
The classification is not definitive, e.g. (35)(g) could in reality be a goal RO verb ('cause the child to go into clothes'),
and Goal LO verbs could alternatively be classified as a type of RO verb, so that drug athletes means something like
'cause athletes to be with drugs', as in Harley 1999. Whether or not we take this path, we end up with a number of
patterns of transitive conversions. For concreteness, let us assume the four pretheoretical templates in (38). In each, let y
be the element appearing as verb stem.
(38) a. CAUSE (x, GO (z, FROM AT/ON/IN (y))
(Source RO; they mined the copper)
b. CAUSE (x, GO (z, TO AT/ON/IN (y))
(Goal RO; they potted a plant)
c. CAUSE (x, GO (y, FROM AT/ON/IN (z))
(Source LO; they gutted a fish)
d. CAUSE (x, GO (y, TO AT/ON/IN (z))
(Goal LO; they crowned the queen)
This is important for us because the choice of the template itself is governed by PS considerations. The logically
possible denotation of a verb like dust could instantiate each one of these templates, but the verb is subject to PS
2 Shelve has an extra nuance whereby the shelved objects must be inherently capable of an ordered arrangement (shelve the
files/albums/books/videos/*tape recorders/*cups), which may in turn suggest that they are perceived as requiring a particular type of storage, a
requirement fulfilled by a shelf. It would be unsurprising if this additional component should turn out to be idiosyncratic, since the verb must be
stored anyway due to the consonant voicing, which is not rule-governed, cf. a knife/ to knife, a roof/ to (re)roof.
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3.4. German particle verbs which inherit the prepositional RO
Normally, German verb particles leave their ROs implicit, but there are some particle verbs which do express their RO
overtly. What interests us is that these particle verbs also display PS effects while their parallel verb + PP constructions
do not. Consider firstly some uses of nach, which, both as a preposition and as a particle, means 'after' in a spatial or
temporal sense:
(39) a. pursuit: jemandem nachlaufen 'run after someone, try to catch them' (cf. nach jemandem laufen 'run after
someone in any sense'). Analogous: jemandem nacheilen, -fahren, -gehen, -reisen 'hurry/drive/go/travel after
sb.'
b. imitation: jemandem etwas nachmachen "someone(dat.) something after-do", 'imitate sb. in sth.' (cf. etwas
nach jemandem machen 'do something after someone (not necessarily in imitation)', jemandem nachstreben
"someone after-strive", 'strive to be like sb.'
c. jemandem nachräumen 'tidy up after sb., clean up their mess (not e.g. tidy up at a later stage than sb.)'
These particle verbs show a PS interpretation in that they are specialised to denoting events involving interaction
between the RO and one of the other verbal arguments. On the other hand, the parallel verb + PP structures do not insist
that any typical interactions take place. We find similar phenomena with German vor 'before (in a temporal or spatial
sense)'. Here are the relevant particle verb groups:
(40) a. An action performed for others to imitate: jemandem einen Handstand vormachen "sb. a handstand beforedo", 'show sb how to do a handstand' (cf. vor jemandem einen Handstand machen 'do a handstand before sb in
any sense'), dem Kind das Wort vorschreiben "the child the word before-write", 'show the child how to write
the word'
b. RO is an audience, addressee or victim of an action: jemandem etwas vorsingen/ vorlesen/ vorspielen 'to
sing/read/play sth to someone' (cf. etwas vor jemandem singen, which could mean singing a song before sb. in
a temporal sense), jemandem etwas vorjammern "...before-whinge", 'whinge about sth to sb.', Jim fand es
schwer, das Rauchen aufzugeben, weil sein Mitarbeiter ihm die ganze Zeit vorqualmt 'Jim found it hard to give
up smoking because his colleague smokes in front of him all the time' (heard in actual use)
c. Possession readings: den Tieren ihr Futter vorwerfen 'throw food before the animals' (for them to eat),
vorliegen 'be in front of someone (and thus in their possession or the subject of their attention)',
Here the particle verbs with vor are confined to uses where the temporal precedence (a) or spatial anteriority (b-c)
conveyed by the particle is portrayed as having specific consequences. Finally, we find possessive readings with
particle verbs with zu- 'to' which are not forced by the parallel V+PP structures.
(41) eine Katze ist uns zugelaufen "a cat has us to-walked", 'a cat came to us (and ended up being ours)', (cf. eine
Katze ist zu uns gelaufen 'a cat walked over to us (no possessional implication)', jemandem den Ball zuspielen
'play the ball to sb. (so that they can do something with it)', jemandem den Ball zuwerfen 'throw the ball to sb.
(so that they can catch it)'
It is perhaps possible to capture the above uses of particles just by saying that they refer to a PS reading, but this may be
too ambitious. It seems more likely that the existence of these particle readings must be licensed by some kind of
stipulation in their lexical entries.
8
A. J. McIntyre
Functional Interpretations
3.5. A+N compounds
German Adjective+Noun compounds contrast clearly with their parallel phrasal structures inasmuch as the compounds
are specialised to naming either memorised concepts or nouns where the adjectival property is possessed by the noun
inherently rather than incidentally. [Schnellzug]N and [[schneller]AP [Zug]N]NP both mean 'fast train', but the compound
must refer to an intrinsically fast train (an express train) and cannot be used of a train which happens to be travelling
rapidly at a given time. Compounds with a colour adjective as nonhead (Rotkohl "red cabbage", Schwarzbrot "black
bread", Weißwurst "white sausage", Schwarzbier "black beer") always refer to cases where the colour is relevant to the
allocation of the noun in a taxonomy and cannot apply e.g. to cases where the entity obtained its colour by some
accident involving paint. Glatteis "smooth ice" is restricted to naming the instance of its logically possible denotation
which has important consequences, viz. 'slippery, dangerous ice'. Warmbier "warm beer" names a particular type of
beer which is meant to be served warm. These A+N compounds all display a type of PS interpretation in that they refer
to an instance of their logically possible denotation where the adjectival property is not incidental, but points to some
memorised concept.
The lack of adjectival inflection in English makes it hard to determine whether the types blackboard and black board
differ structurally (e.g. compounds vs. phrases) or are both phrasal projections with differing stress (perhaps governed
by principles like those discussed by Olsen 2000 in relation to N+N compounds). English initially stressed A+N
structures seem less productive and more idiosyncratic than their German counterparts, but we find some examples
relevant here. One is the expression with compound(-like) accentuation upside–dówn fridge (a new type of refrigerator
which looks upside-down because the freezer unit is not at the top) which constrasts with upside–down frídge (any
refrigerator which happens to be or look inverted). The former case is specialised to a PS reading. Related remarks
apply to smáll clause, upside-down cake, softwood, longjump, blackberry, hothouse, wetsuit, longbow, drydock,
whitewash, sweetcorn, highchair, and blackbird, this exhausts the relevant English examples I have found, whereas
many more German examples could be cited.
3.6. Verbs with implicit arguments
The recovery of implicit arguments sometimes involves PS interpretation, in that they must often be interpreted as
entities which are in an associative local relationship to an overt argument. For instance, when pour has a Goal as direct
object (pour a glass), the implicit theme must be one canonically found in a glass: *I took some dishwashing liquid and
poured the glass. French mettre 'put' can have an implicit Goal when the theme is an item of clothing attaining its
functional position on the human body: mettre sa chemise 'put (on) one's shirt'. hang with an implicit Goal is only
usable when the theme assumes its canonical/functional position: hang a door/picture means to hang it in its frame/on a
wall. Likewise, pull/draw with weapons as object and no PP imply the intention of using them: Grandma drew/pulled
her sword/ knife/ machetti/ pistol (*to clean it). I heard Australian librarians using put without a goal PP (I was putting
books) to express putting books where they belong, on shelves. German stecken 'stick' is used of theme inserted in an
enclosed space. When the latter is implicit, it must be the stereotypical or functional location of the theme (der Schlüssel
steckt 'the key is in the keyhole'). Finally, pull can have an implicit Source provided it is the functional place of the
theme: I pulled the plug/cork (=out of the plughole/bottle), the dentist pulled my teeth. French tirer and German ziehen
'pull' are used similarly in expressing e.g. the removal of plugs from sockets. These argument nonrealisations are
apparently unproductive and must thus be licensed by the verb's lexical entry. Deriving them from some general
contextual recoverability clues would beget illegitimate sentences. For instance, put the plug *(in the plughole)
disallows an implicit goal although it seems no less recoverable than the implicit source in pull the plug.
3.7. Other expressions
PS specialisations presumably occur in many other constructions of which I am not aware. There may for instance be
many other verbs which force functional interpretations of their objects, although there is no easy way to collect the
relevant data. The verb use by definition attributes a function to an object (Pustejovky 1995). The verb board and
German einsteigen presuppose use of a vehicle as a means of transport (*cleaners boarded the train to remove the
rubbish). Likewise, take up implies that the subject intends to do something with the object (*she took up a pen and put
it in the drawer). The functional entailment is absent in pick/lift up. Similar effects are seen with brandish/wield (*he
was brandishing a sword, about to put it back in the cupboard).
4. Generalisations on when PS interpretations occur
The data in section 3 lead to the following generalisations about the occurrence of PS interpretations:
(42) PS INTERPRETATION CANCELLATION : Do not assume a PS interpretation for an expression E iff there is another
expression E' such that E' has an equivalent PS interpretation and
(a)
the logically possible denotation of E is more specific than that of E', and/or
(b)
E is formally less compact than E'.
(43) STIPULATED PS INTERPRETATION: A PS reading for an expression E can be the result of a stipulation in its
lexical entry or the entry of some expression within E. If so, the expression cannot be used in a context
incompatible with a PS reading. Such PS readings will be called 'strong PS readings'.
(44) DEFAULT PS INTERPRETATION: Assume a PS interpretation as the interpretation for an expression E unless:
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a. the full context of E makes a PS reading implausible, or
b. the generalisation in (42) rules out a PS interpretation.
Taken together, these generalisations amount to a position in which PS interpretations can be straightforward contextual
inferences (as e.g. Cuyckens 1984 and Herweg 1989 assume for functional readings of prepositions and Härtl/Witt 1998
for particle verbs), but supplemented with statements about when they do not occur, when they are obligatory and the
observation that some PS interpretations arise from lexical stipulation rather than contextual inference. Of the above
generalisations, (42) will be justified shortly. A challenge to (43) can be ruled out, consider e.g. the idiosyncrasy of
momentary vs. habitual readings in small PPs (section 3.1.2), and of the interpretations of some A+N compounds, verbs
with implicit arguments and complex verbs and other constructions discussed in sections 3.2-3.7 and 6. Likewise, I
anticipate little disagreement with (44), which is simply an inference which results when speakers fill in details in an
underspecified context by default-guessing that the scenario being described is one which already exists in their world
knowledge. What results is what I call a weak PS reading, a reading which disappears as soon as further context makes
it implausible. All cases in which PP's with at receive a functional reading, other than small PPs, are in this class. Thus,
he's at the shopping centre implies that he is shopping, but only if the context does not suggest otherwise he's penniless
and homeless and would freeze to death outside, no wonder he's at the shopping centre all the time. Many English
particle verbs are also examples. Thus, I put the cassette in implies a tape player as RO in the default case, but the
context can overrule (when you pack your bag, don't forget to put the cassette in-we could listen to it in the car). This
may be contrasted with the strong PS reading of the German equivalent eine Kassette einlegen, where RO must be a
tape player, whatever the context is. The weak-strong distinction that DEFAULT PS INTERPRETATION and STIPULATED PS
INTERPRETATION jointly capture can be summarised thus:
Weak PS readings
Strong PS readings
-are inferred, not lexically stipulated -are lexically stipulated, not inferred
-can be overriden by the context
-cannot be overridden by the context; contexts where PS readings are
unnatural will be coerced to fit the reading or induce unacceptability
The generalisation in (42) may seem controversial. Before pointing out some empirical evidence for it, let us consider
why it should be conceptually plausible. Essentially, it is a piece of reasoning based on the principles encapsulated in
Grice's (1975) Maxim of Quantity ('Do not make your contribution more informative than is required'). The reasoning
works as follows. If a speaker chooses an expression E ahead of a less semantically specific and/or more concise
expression E' which expresses a PS reading R, then the hearers assume that R is not part of the speaker's message, for if
it were, there would be no need for a more specific or prolix expression. Additionally, (42) may be traceable to the
general tendency evident in the vocabulary of languages whereby 'natural languages abhor absolute synonyms just as
nature abhors a vacuum' (Cruse 1986:270). Note also Clark's (1995) hypothesis that 'contrast' (the idea that children
learning a language 'take every difference in form to mark a difference in meaning', p. 64) plays an important role in the
acquisition of concept-lexeme correspondences, notably in limiting the set of possible meanings of an expression to
those which are not already lexicalised in the child's vocabulary.
Empirical support for (42) comes from various quarters, e.g. PPs like those in (45), where the choice of on top of and
inside ahead of on and in renders a functional interpretation highly unlikely:
(45) the steak on top of the plate/ the pot on top of the stove (plate/pot are probably upside-down), the record on top
of the record player (record not properly on the turntable), the disc inside the computer/tape inside the tape
player (i.e. inside its housing, but not in the proper slot for discs/tapes), she's inside the bus (??on her way
home), he's inside the hospital (*being operated on)
Inside differs from in in insisting on complete enclosure and on top of can convey contact only with upper surfaces,
unlike on (cf. the picture on the wall). As inside and on top of have more compact and less specific counterparts in
in/on, (42) predicts that they do not receive PS interpretations. Certainly, there are cases where PS uses with these
prepositions are trivially ruled out by their spatial semantics. For instance, a flower inside a vase conveys a noncanonical interpretation in which the flower is occluded by the vase for the trivial reason that the semantics of inside
conveys complete enclosure. However, there is nothing in the spatial semantics of inside/on top of which rules out the
PS uses in (45), for here the respective conditions of upper surface contact and complete enclosure would be fulfilled by
the PS readings. Rather, the PS readings seem to be ruled out because the choice of the more specific and less compact
prepositions in a context where in and on would have been sufficient to express the PS readings is apparently
interpreted as a sign that the speaker is wishing to convey something other than a PS reading, in concert with (42).
In German it is possible to 'kill' a functional interpretation by resorting to the complex circumposition-like
constructions seen in (46). (On the syntactic structure of this pleonastic construction, see McIntyre 2001:A3 and
references.) Harnisch (1982:124) writes that certain dialects must use the complex PP in order to restore a purely spatial
meaning and discourage a non-spatial or functional interpretation.
(46) a. er ist in der Kirche drin "he is in the church in", 'he is in the church'
b. sie ging in die Kirche rein 'she went into the church'
c. die Platte liegt auf dem Plattenspieler drauf "the record lies on the record player thereon", 'the record is on
(top of) the record player'
In 3.2, we noted that German double particle verbs often differ from the formally and semantically less complex single
particle verbs in not receiving a PS reading. That German single particle verbs are much more regularly specialised to
PS readings than are English particle verbs may be due to the fact that German, but not English, has a double particle
10
Functional Interpretations
A. J. McIntyre
verb system which is used to refer to contextually present ROs. English lacks such a system, so its particle verbs must
do the work of both German systems.
The principles introduced at the beginning of this section are all I have to offer in the way of general principles
governing when PS readings are obligatory, optional or impossible. The principles do not cover all the data discussed in
this essay. I mention two cases which seem to me to be important problem cases. We have already noted cases like she's
at/near her desk, where at and near differ in that near strongly disfavours PS readings while at allows them in the
default case, and analogous cases with German an and bei. Either a case must be made that at/an are less specific than
near/bei, which would mean that the contrasts are in fact an instance of the generalisation in (42), or there is something
in the meaning of near/bei which rules out the PS readings. An example of the latter approach could adopt Herweg's
(1989) suggestion that bei explicitly disallows contact between RO and LO, which would disallow the relevant PS
readings. However, Stiebels (1996:84f) notes that Herweg's use of a negated contact predicate is problematic because it
must be acquired via negative evidence. I bequeath this problem to future research. A second problem not addressed by
the principles discussed in this section is a systematic contrast between over and under, which show PS readings, and
above and below, which do not. This we discuss in the next section.
suggests that the speaker is worried about the cloth's getting dirty by touching the table. This is implied because the
speaker chooses a preposition which locates the cloth higher than the table. Over, which stresses the vertical alignment
between cloth and table, is inappropriate in conveying that interpretation, since the vertical alignment does not imply
distance from the table. On the other hand, it does imply that the cloth can cover the table, which makes it more suitable
in contexts where the cloth is protecting it from dirt. The respective horizontal and vertical orientation of the regions
also explains why the height of an above-region, but not an over-region, can be measured, as in (56).
(54) a. Make sure the clothi is above the tablek, or iti/*k will get dirty.
b. Make sure the clothi is over the tablek, or itk/*i will get dirty.
(55) When not playing, the pianist-conductor held his hands {above/*over} the piano, so the orchestra could see his
directions better.
(56) a. The lightswitch was six inches above/*over the shelf.
b. Basil's autobiography is three books above/*over Ethel P. Taylorson's Bildungsroman in the pile.
Secondly, Talmy, Brugman and Becker note that over implies greater closeness between LO and RO than does above,
and does not allow any relevant object to intervene between the entities. For instance, they live in a flat over ours puts
their flat on the floor immediately above our flat, while above allows intermediate flats. This difference arguably
follows from the one mentioned in the previous paragraph.
These differences between above and over do not lead to a complementary distribution. Many spatial configurations,
especially those involving vertical alignment, can be described in terms of either conceptualisation. Bearing this in
mind, we turn to PS interpretations. Consider e.g. (48), and assume that the bird is in a region where both over and
above give apposite spatial descriptions. If the speaker wishes to locate the bird with reference to the rock without
implying that the bird has any dealings with it, it would make sense to choose the preposition which implies a greater
distance from the rock, thus decreasing the possibility of LO-RO interaction, and which is non-committal on whether
there is the type of vertical alignment which would be a necessary condition for the interaction. If above is chosen,
hearers will reason that a speaker who bypasses over, whose spatial semantics is better suited to an interactional
reading, is distancing her-/himself from an interactional implicature.
Thus, I suggest that the closer proximity and vertical alignment conveyed by over puts the LO in a position which
makes it easier for it to interact with the RO. Some of the non-spatial uses of over noted above (e.g. power over
someone, praying over someone) could be explained analogously, but of course in such metaphoric cases, above does
not come into contention as a competitor, for the metaphor itself involves interaction. (above lends itself to metaphors
where the 'height' of the LO and RO are compared: his score was above mine.) Alternatively, the metaphoric uses of
over may exploit a second sense of over in which the LO partly surrounds or covers and is supported by the RO (with a
coat over his arm, water all over the floor), a sense which above does not have.
More could be said on the subject, and perhaps alternative accounts of the meaning of over and above will necessitate
different explanations for the (im)possibility of functional readings, and I have not addressed the problems of under vs.
below and at vs. near. However, I think we are justified in concluding that a careful analysis of roughly synonymous
spatial expressions will yield explanations for the distribution of functional readings. I leave the subject with the
comment that there is no indication that we must stipulate the possibility of PS readings in the entry for over. They
seem to more similar to the weak PS readings of the type encountered with at than to the strong PS readings found in
small PPs. The rationale behind this claim is that PS readings in non-metaphorical cases of over are not obligatory.
Thus, he held an umbrella over his head has a functional reading (=use of the umbrella as a rain shelter) which is
defeasible with extra context, such as the continuation ...so he could get through the narrow entrance, and I hung the
cloth on the hook over the heater implies the use of the heater as a drying implement only by default, cf. a continuation
like ...because it looked good there.
5. Over/under vs. above/below
Unlike above and below, over and under suggest PS interpretations where there is some type of non-spatial interaction
or where the vertically aligned configuration is one which is typical for the LO-RO pairs, witness (47)-(53). In the
binding data in (47), over can only entail that the soldier holds the sword over the head of the prisoner, whilst above
suggests that the soldier is waving the sword above his own head. In the former case, there is an interaction between LO
and RO which is characterised by the function of the sword as a weapon. Talmy (1983:248) notes that choosing over
ahead of above in (48) suggests 'that the bird is closer to the boulder or is about to relate to it in some way (e.g. land on
it or pick food off it)'. In (48) and (50), under allows a metonymy in which table, chair and tree stand in for the parts
'tabletop', 'seat', 'branches'. This coercion is an adaption of the meaning of the PP to standard configurations. It is
impossible with below, which can be used only of less normal situations (e.g. if the LO and RO are in a pile). In
functional uses like those in (51), over and under imply that the influence of one of the entities participating in the
interaction extends down/up to the other. (52) and (53) are metaphorical instantiations of the same phenomenon. I
conclude that over/under are chosen ahead of above/below when there is a PS interpretation, involving either interaction
between the LO and RO, or a memorised configuration.
(47) a. The soldieri intimidated the prisonerk by waving a sword over hisk/*i head.
b. The soldieri intimidated the prisonerk by waving a sword above hisi/?k head.
(48) The seagull is over/above the boulder. (Talmy 1983:248)
(49) The chair is under/*below the table.
(50) Nathanial sat under/*below a tree, rather than getting burnt under/*below the hot sun.
(51) a. Kenneth washed the mud off under/*below the tap.
b. Gwenneth studied the insect under/*below a magnifying glass.
c. I heated the mixture over/*above the burner.
(52) When the man died, the priest prayed over/*above his corpse.
(53) a. Transformational Grandma's first album had a big influence over/*above a lot of musicians.
b. he was under/*below the power of mind-altering substances when he said that
c. his disappointment over/*above his failure to win the Nobel Prize for Linguistics.
It is not clear that above/below have a more specific meaning than over/under, so (42) cannot explain these contrasts.
Rather, it appears that there is something intrinsic to the spatial meaning of over/under which makes them more suitable
for licensing interactional or stereotypical RO/LO configurations. While the relevant differences are not accessible to
introspection based on a small selection of minimal pairs, it is noteworthy that the descriptions of the differences
between over and above I have found in the litature are compatible with a semantic explanation for the availability of
PS readings, although the motivations given for the descriptions are largely independent of PS readings. Let us look at
some of the suggestions now, noting in each case their independent motivation and the manner in which they bear upon
PS readings. I concentrate only on the contrast between over and above, admitting that the less well studied prepositions
under and below may not correspond in all relevant respects. Some authors who explicitly address the over vs. above
contrast are Wege 1991, 1996, Talmy 1983:248, Brugman 1983:26-32 and Becker 1994:129-34.
Firstly, one can paraphrase points made by Wege 1996:12, Wege (1991:288f) following Hawkins (1983:174), and
Brugman (1983:27) by suggesting that above is more tolerant than over in allowing LO's which are not vertically
aligned with the RO. For instance, Brugman notes that their flat is over ours implies that it is directly above our flat.
Substituting above nullifies this intuition. The point is also clear in the antenna works better {over/above} the tv set,
where over implies a vertical alignment, while above would be obligatory if the sentence were continued with ...the
higher it is, the better. These observations suggest that over locates the LO in a space extending upwards from the RO,
while above places it in any horizontally extended space higher than the LO.3 (54) and (55) follow from this. (54)(a)
3
I admit to some idealisation here. Speakers can still use over even if they know that the vertical alignment is not absolute, but I think it is not a copout to appeal to pragmatic tolerance here (cf. e.g. Herweg 1989). This allows us to continue maintaining that over indicates a vertical alignment. This
type of latitude with rigid definitions is needed for a case like he was completely covered in mud, where visibile small patches of unsullied skin hardly
warrant defining completely as 'almost entirely'.
11
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6. Case studies of Stipulated PS interpretations
This section examines some case studies of expressions exhibiting strong (i.e. lexically stipulated and obligatory) PS
readings. To clarify problems posed by the data, I try to formulate lexical entries for the items involved. Both the
successes and the failures of this exercise will make it amply clear that -contrary to what a superficial appraisal of the
data might suggest- not all PS readings 'come from the context', but are the result of some lexical stipulation. Various
side points will emerge in the analysis, many of them pointing to problems whose solutions (which must await future
research in many cases) promise to teach us much about the nature of idiomatic structures.
6.1. before
The uses of before alluded to at various points above are a good choice for a case study for stipulated PS readings,
especially as the data have not to my knowledge been discussed before. Here we discuss only uses where the
preposition locates the LO in frontal proximity to an RO, and not e.g. (quasi-)temporal uses (opposite: after) like before
noon, before someone in a race. At least pretheoretically, we can distinguish the following main uses:
1. RO: animate; Entailment: the RO has the LO in a temporary possession relationship, and is doing (or intends to or
is meant to do) someting with the LO:
(57) a. I placed the food before the dog
b. I held the newspaper before her.
c. That's like throwing pearls before the swine
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Functional Interpretations
A. J. McIntyre
2. LO: animate ; RO: inanimate; entailment is that the LO uses or otherwise interacts with the RO
(58) a. We sat down before the fireplace/heater b. He spends his evenings before the TV
c. He stood before the automatic teller machine, waiting for the money to come out
3. RO: person (or personified object) with some authority or status which is relevant to the interaction of LO and RO:
(59) a. He stood before the headmaster/court
b. He cowered/trembled/bowed before the king 5
4. LO: an event; Entailment: the RO is (conceptualised as) perceiving the event:
(60) a. They get a kick out of performing before a large audience.
b. He broke down before the cameras, microphones and journalists of all the major TV stations.
Previous sections (notably 3.1.2) already gave evidence that non-spatial LO-RO interaction is a necessary condition for
before in each subuse except that in 4. Comparing 4 and (61) completes the demonstration:
(61) He {performed/broke down} {in front of/*before} the opera house.
It should be noted that although some PPs with before are probably idioms (e.g. before my very eyes), most before PPs
discussed here are undoubtedly part of a productive pattern.
All uses have in common that the location of the LO in the (literal or metaphorical) intrinsic frontal region of the RO
entails some type of interaction. These common properties would ideally enable us to conflate the various subuses into a
single use. Below we note some difficulties with this, but let us set this problem temporarily aside, and assume a that
the senses do follow from a single sense of the preposition. Here is an attempt at a preliminary partial lexical entry for
before:
(62) Partial lexical entry for before:
Syntax: [[ __ ]P [y]DP<acc>]PP
predicated of/modifying [x]DP/VP
Semantics:
Sense 1: [LOCATED (X, INTRINSIC_FRONT_REGION (Y))] → INTERACT (X,Y)
Sense 2…n: <other senses>
We abstract away from some irrelevant details here. Minimally, the syntactic information concerning before should
indicate its category and its ability to case-mark a complement DP. There are numerous options for relating PPs to what
they are predicated of or modify (small clauses, PP-internal subjects, binding with referential arguments…). We merely
note that the PP must have an external argument, and leave it to the reader's theory of syntax to determine how it is
licensed. We can likewise afford to be less than fully explicit on the spatial part of the semantics of before. A more
explicit representation might draw on Lang (1993), who decomposes projective prepositions using predicates needed for
dimensional adjectives.
The obligatory nature of the interactions that before requires must be stipulated, for it seems impossible to devise an
independently motivated account of the spatial representations of before and in front of which predicts respectively
obligatory and optional PS readings. The main problem is how the interactions relate to the spatial meaning of before.
In a tentative decision, I used the entailment symbol (→) ahead of e.g. a conjunction (&). Unfortunately I have found
little evidence for deciding which is the better option and we will have to be content with a mere survey of the
possibilities. The question of which relation to choose is empirical, not merely notational. Unlike the conjunction, the
entailment symbol is meant to suggest that a model of before's semantics should express that its spatial contribution is
primary and its interactional component subordinate, in much the same way as the functional implicature in a contextfree interpretation of John is at the piano (namely that he is playing or intends to play it) is subordinate to at's spatial
contribution. The difference is merely that before's lexical entry stipulates this entailment as obligatory, while that of at
need not mention it at all.
Unfortunately, Sense 1 of before in (62) must probably be divided into further subsenses to avoid overgeneration. The
underspecified INTERACT-predicate in (62) would, with an animate RO and LO (the use in (59)) license any context
where there is some type of interaction, e.g. communication, but the examples (whether from real texts or selfconstructed) all suggest a specific type of interaction, one influenced by the superior status or power of the RO. To the
extent that before is unacceptable if this condition is not fulfilled, e.g. in (63), we must change (62) so that it refers to
various subsenses, for the restriction that the RO should have greater authority vis à vis the LO does not apply to the
other uses of the preposition discussed here.
(63) I was hanging around outside, when suddenly my boss/best friend was standing {in front of/??before} me.
(Bierwisch 1983 argued that the function (purpose) of concepts like SCHOOL should be the basis of a generalised
definition capturing the nouns' subsenses, such as 'building', 'process' etc.) If the articleless, and thus generic, use of
school does foreground the function of the school, one could try to derive the functional interpretation of at school from
an inference that the function (rather than the identiy) of the school is relevant to the location of the LO at a school.
However, this explanation should be either supplemented or rejected, for it predicts that any generic use of the LO, not
just bare nouns, would receive a functional reading, flying in the face of contrasts like (64) and (65).
(64) a. He wanted to go to hospital {for a cancer test/*to talk to the sick}, but no hospital let him in
b. He wanted to go to a hospital {for a cancer test/to talk to the sick}, but no hospital let him in
(65) a. In every city he visited, he spent time in church {praying/*doing a guided tour}
b. In every city he visited, he spent time in a church {praying/doing a guided tour}
An alternative would be a semiproductive template, redundancy rule or construction à la Goldberg 1995 which
generalises over the syntactic and semantic properties of small PPs. While sympathetic to the Generative research
tradition which sees constructions as epiphenomena of general syntactic principles and the lexemes involved, PPs seem
far enough away from core syntax to make a construction approach a valid possibility. However, while the syntax of the
construction must be stipulated, and while there may well be an overarching generalisation which is referred to by every
small PP, it is unclear whether it avails us anything to posit generalisations for the semantics of any substantial set of
small PPs, although several semantic subregularities apply to smaller sets of small PPs. A template applying to all small
PPs would have to be highly polysemous, as is clear from the PPs in (66), which have interpretations differing from
those of the functional small PPs seen thus far. My experiments in formulating a generalisation covering just the
functional small PPs examined herein needed to be supplemented by so many extra generalisations governing individual
small PPs and/or classes of them that it seemed preferable to keep the semantic generalisations fairly specific.
(66) at stake, at work, in tune, in office, on air, on hold, offline, out of earshot, out of town
In most functional small PPs, the preposition exhibits a spatial meaning which it may have in full PPs. Thus, a person
who is in hospital is in the same spatial relationship to the hospital as someone who is in the hospital. Likewise, a
concert on cd and a concert on a cd display the same LO-RO relationship, except that the full PP is not confined to a
particular sense of the preposition (cf. the dirt and scratches on the cd). Armed with this observation, we now proceed
to a proposal for describing small PPs, taking at as an example.
(67) Partial lexical entry for at
Syntax: [[ __ ]P [y]DP<acc>]PP
predicated of/modifying [x]DP/VP
Semantics:
Sense 1: LOCATED ([THING/EVENTX], AT* ([PLACE/THING y]))
Anomalies
licensed in the following contexts:
1. Syntax: [[__]P [y]N<acc>]PP
(a) y= educational institution (college, university, school, boarding school, highschool, seminary
school…; habitual reading possible), x=person learning or (for school, university, in momentary
reading) person teaching
(b) y=church, x=participant in church service (only in momentary reading)
(c) y=sea, x=seacraft, person using y (only in momentary reading)
(d) y=table, x=person using table as eating surface; register: antiquated
2...n. <further anomalies concerning spatial at>
Sense 2…n: <other senses, e.g. temporal (at midday) and directional (look at people)>
The second line gives the default syntax of at, which covers most uses of the preposition. Deviant uses like small PPs
can override this generalisation. A semantic analysis of at cannot be performed here, but fortunately we do not need a
concrete proposal for the general tenor of my analysis of small PPs to be clear. Let Sense 1 be the spatial sense(s) of at,
excluding the directional senses (throw stones at people), and AT* be a placeholder for a concrete characterisation of the
relevant sense(s). Information on the meaning of spatial at is given in Becker (1994), Cienki (1989), Cuyckens (1984),
Herskovits (1986), Wesche (1987) and McIntyre (in prep). I will simply assume that at has a number of distinct senses,
but that the non-directional spatial uses are a single sense.6
In (67), Sense 1 has additional information associated with it which I call 'anomalies'. Among other things, this
includes information licensing the existence and distribution of small PPs. The anomalies must state the syntactic
peculiarities of small PPs. (Instead of being stated in its entirity in the entry for at, the syntax of small PPs could be
given a general structural template, to which every preposition capable of forming small PPs has a cross-reference.) My
representation of the syntax of small PPs locates the idiosyncrasy solely in the fact that the complement does not
project; other analyses might treat the whole structure as a left-headed P° compound and dispense with the case feature
on the noun.
We must also capture the set of nouns which form small PPs with at. In some cases, such nouns will have to be listed
as individual tokens. The subclass 'educational institutions' (cf. (a)) perhaps qualifies as a class-based generalisation.
Acceptable small PPs where the noun is a subordinate-level educational institution (at seminary school, at law college)
make one query whether the input nouns must be listed, but a series of unacceptable cases (*at dance academy, *at free
4
6.2. Small PPs and semiproductive functional preposition uses
It is unlikely that the semantic behaviour of small PPs can be explained solely by a larger generalisation about bare
nouns. To see why, consider how such an explanation would run. Since the noun in at school lacks a determiner, it
refers only to a type of entity, not to a specific token. This disregard of token identification brings to the fore the
definitional properties of the generic SCHOOL, one of which is the school's function, cf. the fact that other bare N uses of
school refer to the activities there, never the building (we've got school now, school bores him, how was school?).
4
One might argue that the LO is an event in some cases, i.e. that before is locating someone's sitting (cf. a) or spending time (b), rather than a NP. It
would be possible to reformulate the definitions to accomodate this, but I will simply assume that the prepositional complement of position verbs (sit,
stand) is predicated of the theme NP.
5
One could add the combination flee before someone, but it is probably better seen as a memorised archaism. Perhaps, however, it is indicative of a
possible conceptualisation. German uses vor 'in front of, before' to link complements of expressions denoting fear or flight (Angst vor 'fear of', fliehen
vor 'flee from', retten vor 'save from'). Conceptually, these either locate the fear or flight in the abstract frontal region of the threatening entity, or this
region is the source from which the runner-away or experiencer departs.
13
25.05.2007
6
I merely note that the directional and statal senses of at cannot easily be conflated, witness the absolute incompatibility of the latter, but not the
former, with animate ROs: *I stood at the elephant (acceptable only if the elephant is a statue) vs. I looked at/ threw stones at the elephant. I propose
a solution to this puzzle in work in preparation.
14
Functional Interpretations
A. J. McIntyre
school, *at polytechnic (college), ?at theological college) complicate matters. It is unclear whether we should (a) look
for a finer generalisations on the educational institutions entering into the construction, (b) assume that [at
[<educational institution>]N] is a semiproductive generalisation, (c) individually list the nouns which enter into the
construction or (d) adopt some combination of the above strategies. We return to class-based generalisations shortly.
Further complications attend the specification of the type of functional readings which the PPs receive. I see no
regularities here. We noted in 3.1.2, point A, that institutional PPs tend to place restrictions on the LOs in terms of
whether they are people who (a) are visitors or (b) work at the institution. For instance, both teachers and students can
go to school, but doctors and prison warders can go to hospital/prison only if they become patients or prisoners. In the
educational institutions mentioned in the anomalies in (67), we note similar idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, the distribution
of momentary and habitual readings (defined in 3.1.2, point A) also looks idiosyncratic.
I now note some other phenomena faced when dealing with small PPs and semi-regular patterns in full PPs. (This
excursus serves to complete my survey of some empirical material surrounding small PP's which may otherwise never
be discussed.) Firstly, there are prepositions whose default syntax is a small PP structure. We already mentioned French
en in this connection. German per 'by, through' also uniquely forms small PPs.7
(68) per Post 'by mail', per Schiff 'by ship', per Scheck 'by cheque', per Telefon 'by phone', per Fax 'by fax', per
Mausklick 'by clicking on the appropriate hyperlink'
Small PPs may be 'bound', i.e. licensed only in particular contexts. For instance, to sea is licensed only as complement
of go (we went to sea). Likewise, the prefixal prepositions pre-/post- are licensed only when the small PP is a front form
of a compound (post-conference talk vs. *it was post-conference), an exception being pre-war/postwar.
We return to generalisations covering classes rather than individual nouns. Whatever impression at may have given,
we must note that not all small PPs involve one-by-one listing of the possible noun complements. Candidates for
productive constructions are
• German per (cf. (68))
• French en, e.g. with vehicles (en voiture 'by car', cf. 3.1.2, point E)
• on with information carriers (on laser disc, on dvd, cf. (27))
• on where the RO is a musical instrument and the LO is either a music performance or the musician (Dave is on
piano, she did a solo on harmonica; these were mentioned in conjunction with (20))
These are productive: they admit of new formations which do not sound odd or self-consciously creative. The two
uses of on seem fully productive within narrowly defined niches based on the class of noun complement (information
carriers and basic-level instruments), a phenomenon we also find in some full PPs, e.g. the use of on with large vehicles
(on the bus, on the airplane, on the Orient Express, on the Titanic). Such cases do not require individual listing of the
PP. What is idiosyncratic is that the prepositional use stipulates that it must combine with a particular sortal class which
is narrower than what might be predicted from general semantic well-formedness principles. Analogous restrictions
based on narrow semantic input classes have been posited in Pinker (1989) for the verbs undergoing certain valency
alternations and in McInytre (2001b) and Zeller (1999) for the verbs which combine with particular senses of verb
particles. These classes are simply a semantic analogue of the phonological and morphological selection restrictions for
affixes well known to morphologists (e.g. Raffelsiefen 1992).
The issue of narrow input classes is, I argue in McIntyre (2002), distinct from semiproductivity, the phenomenon
whereby new combinations are possible but require lexical listing (e.g. Jackendoff 1997). We noted one possible
example of this in the analysis of small PPs with at above, and full PPs with German institutional auf (see the paragraph
above (17)). This type of incomplete productivity is apparently not restricted to functional PPs. Becker (1994:50) notes
that French à 'at, in' can take as RO certain rooms within a building, but not others.
Another important problem associated with narrowly defined input classes is that they merge imperceptibly with
stipulated PS entailments. Consider the fact that the use of on in on the train/bus/ferry is restricted to functioning
vehicles (cf. (4)). One could capture this either by positing something like 'large functioning vehicles' as a selection
restriction/input class governing the choice of RO, or state that the RO must be a functional means of transport as an
obligatory entailment. The latter position would be favoured if the idiosyncrasy concerned more than the choice of RO,
but to my knowledge this is not the case. Although the type of RO is stipulated, there does not seem to be any stipulation
regarding the relationship between the LO and RO: a context-free use of he was on the bus suggests the use of the bus
as a means of transport, but this is a weak PS reading, cancellable by additional context, e.g. the cleaner was on the bus
removing the grafitti, and is therefore not stipulated.
functional or associative relationship to the LO. Note that many of the particle verbs below have other meanings not
relevant here. The lists of possible LO/RO pairs are probably not exhaustive, although I have tried to make them as
complete as possible.
(69) a. einlegen 'lay/put in'; Possible LO/RO pairs: cassette/ recorder, disc/ computer, paper/ printer cartridge, sole/
shoe, film/ camera, batteries/ battery holder in appliance
b. einstecken 'stick in, insert'; Possible LO/RO pairs: letter/ letterbox, card/ banking machine, plug/ power
socket
c. einhängen 'hang in sth.'; Possible LO/RO roof tiles/ roof battens, door/ door frame, telephone receiver/
internal space in wall telephone designed for holding the receiver
d. einspannen 'insert, thereby making sth. tight'; Possible LO/RO pairs: paper/ typewriter, horse/ harness
e. einwerfen 'throw in'. (The relevant use of einwerfen is based on a subuse of werfen which involves insertion
of LO through a narrow opening in an enclosed container, after which it falls. This is distinct from the ballistic
motion in most uses of werfen/throw.) Possible LO/RO pairs: coins/ slot coin machines, letters/ letterboxes,
glass/ containers provided to collect glass for recycling
f. einstellen 'put in a vertical position in sth'; Possible LO/RO pairs: (in some varieties only:) car/ garage
g. einheben 'lift in'; Possible LO/RO pairs: (variety-specific) door/ door frame, engine/ housing for engine
I chose these verbs as a case study because, of the many German and English particles I have examined, ein seemed to
be the one where the PS specialisations are the most systematic. However, closer inspection reveals a number of
idiosyncrasies which have been greatly underestimated in studies discussing ein (McIntyre 2001, Härtl/Witt 1998 and
the essays in Olsen 1998). Whilst there are regularities to be captured, notably the fact that ein refers to an interior goal
most cases, let us consider the idiosyncratic features of ein in these verbs.
• The relevant use of the particle is semi-productive; the verbs which combine with it must be memorised. There are
inexplicable gaps like *eintun 'put in' ((70) shows that tun is possible with the analogous PP or double particle
in/rein 'in', but not with ein). None of my informants countenance the relevant use of einstellen (cf. (69)(f)),
although its attestation in dictionaries and corpora show that it is semantically plausible. Also, as mentioned in
(69)(e), only one sense of werfen combines with ein in the relevant sense. There seems to be no principled reason
why ein is impossible in contexts like (71), involving other uses of werfen, especially as the parallel PPs and double
particles are acceptable. Additionally, schmeißen, a colloquial synonym of werfen, does not happily combine with
ein in the relevant sense. I have heard den Brief einschmeißen 'put the letter in a letterbox', but this combination
finds little favour with informants.
(70) a. {Leg/tu} bitte den Film {in die Kamera/rein}! 'please put the film {in the camera/in}'
b. {Leg/*tu} bitte den Film ein! 'please put the film in'
(71) a. Beim Basketballtraining habe ich den Ball fünfzig mal {in den Korb/rein/*ein}geworfen
During basket ball training, I threw the ball {into the basket/in/in} fifty times
b. Bitte wirf deinen Müll {in die Mülltonne/rein/*ein}.
Can you please throw your rubbish {in the rubbish tin/in there/in}.
• The verbs which do exist impose apparently unprincipled restrictions on the LO-RO pairs which can be embedded
in their semantic representation. One would have thought that an associative pair like 'key/lock' would have been a
prime candidate for being expressed by einstecken ((69)(b)), and indeed some dictionaries attest an apparently
obsolescent use of this verb with Schlüssel 'key' as object and a lock as implicit RO. However, einstecken cannot be
used in this way in current German. Even in favourable contexts like (72)(a), a double particle or PP must be used.
Arguably this is due to blocakge by another use of einstecken in the sense 'take with one, put in one's bag or
pocket'. However, this explanation wrongly predicts that die Geldkarte einstecken should mean 'bring the bank card
with one'8 rather than 'put the card in the automatic bank machine'. Apparently, native speakers need to list which
(classes of) LOs can occur with which use of einstecken. (72)(b,c) give further examples of LOs where einstecken
is impossible, even though possible paraphrases with double particles or PPs suggest that they are not ruled out by
principled factors.
(72) a. sie ging zur Tür und steckte den Schlüssel {ins Schloß/rein/*ein}
she went to the door and put the key {in the lock/in/in}
b. Steck die Glühbirne {in die Fassung/rein/*ein}!
stick/put the lightbulb {in the socket/in/in}
b. Steck die Diskette {in den Laufwerk/rein/*ein}!
stick/put the disc {in the disc drive/in/in}
Working out a satisfactory explicit representation for ein which incorporates the idiosyncrasies of the constructions
discussed above must be delegated to future research. I merely note some preliminaries here, directing readers to Zeller
(1999: chapters 4 and 5) for useful ideas on the lexical entries of particles. Firstly, the entry for ein is probably part of a
super-entry also comprising in. Both items belong to the category P, but there are syntactic differences. in must take a
NP complement, while ein may not. Additionally, ein, but not in, is licensed only in particle verbs and compounds such
6.3. Particle verbs
As a final case study of stipulated PS readings, we consider some German particle verbs with ein 'in'. Specifically, we
concentrate on cases where the particle can be replaced by a PP with in without affecting the meaning of the whole VP,
other than w.r.t. the differences between a full NP complement of the preposition and the implicit entity functioning as
RO of the particle. The subset of these verbs we study are those where the implicit RO must be one which stands in a
7
The examples in (68) and the glosses follow a noticeable tendency for small PPs to become systematic with instrumental prepositions, cf. further
cases like by car, by air, by hand. Note also a nascent small PP use of German mit 'with', e.g. mit Kreditkarte 'by credit card' and mit Brief 'by letter,
with a letter'. If the tendency should turn out to have further cross-linguistic significance, there might be a stronger case for a connection between
articlelessness and reference to the function of a noun than I have made out above, for instrumental prepositions are intrinsically functional
prepositions.
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8
Incidentally, this verb illustrates another typical particle verb interpretation strategy ignored in this study: the RO of the particle is lexically
stipulated as being a particular type of entity. einstecken in this sense stipulates its RO as a 'carrying enclosure'. This sense of the particle is a happax
legomenon, but other particle uses with lexically fixed landmarks combine with large numbers of verbs (e.g. over in knock over, fall over, push over
(RO: centre of gravity)).
16
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A. J. McIntyre
as Eingang 'entry'). The phonological differences (/ωn/ vs. /aωn/) cannot be traced to currently operative phonological
rules, but require a stipulation to capture their distribution. Focussing on more central matters, and ignoring the
relationship to in (and assuming that the representation can be adjusted to capture the common points), we may propose
the following partial representation for ein:
(73) Part of the lexical entry for ein
Syntax: [[ __ ]P [ ]V]V' (Where V' has the argument structure <...x> and y is suppressed)
Semantics:
Sense 1: BECOME(LOCATED ([THINGX], IN* ([PLACE/THING y]))) is licensed when V =
1. fliegen 'fly', treten 'step', laufen 'run' (if x=train, sporting team etc), trudeln 'come in dribs and drabs'
2. legen, stecken, hängen, spannen, werfen, stellen, heben, setzen iff [x IN y] is a configuration where
the function of x and/or y is fulfilled or where y is the stereotypical location for x
3...n <other verbs combining with ein in Sense 1>
The representation must state the syntactic structure of German particle verbs (for which I arbitrarily assume V'; cf. e.g.
Zeller 1999), and the argument structure, which needs to guarantee that the LO, but not the RO, is linked syntactically.
As e.g. Zeller 1999 and McIntyre 2002 note, the senses of a particle are often quite selective about the verbs with which
they combine. One must somehow stipulate individual verbs and/or verb classes which are allowed to do so. Often, the
information concerning these verbs will also have to state additional unpredictable semantic nuances and argument
selection properties for the combinations. The above lexical entry does this for the particle verbs in (69). Minimally, we
have to state that the verbs receive PS interpretations, namely that the RO is construed as being one which allows a
functional or stereotypical inference about the LO. Unfortunately, our task is not finished, since the discussion of (72)
noted that some particle verbs stipulate which LO-RO pairs may bind the variables in the semantic structure of the
particle. In (73), I refrain from listing the LO-RO pairs which are licensed with each verb. This would be a simple
exercise, however.
mention in this connection is the Generative Lexicon theory of Pustejovsky (e.g. 1995), which proposes an articulated
semantic structure for nouns, parts of which can be selectively referred to by the mechanisms involved in meaning
composition. For instance, the so-called 'telic role' in the 'qualia structure' of a noun encodes information about the
function of an object. The telic role of knife indicates that it cuts things. Pustejovsky argues that the entailments that a
good knife is a knife which cuts well and that using a knife involves cutting something with it arise because the
adjectival evaluation and the specification of the underspecified activitiy denoted by use access the telic role of knife.
Pustejovsky (1995:231f) briefly mentions functional interpretations of prepositions as involving access to qualia
structure, but does not develop the analysis. An explicit Generative Lexicon treatment of some of the weak and strong
PS readings discussed herein would probably enrich both that theory and our understanding of PS phenomena.
I would like to address in more detail the treatment which has been accorded to PS interpretations in Two-Level
Semantics, an example of a theory which tries to purge lexical entries of all details which can be inferred from general
conceptual principles. The remarks are critical, but my intention is not to attack the theory per se, but to encourage it to
improve. Two-Level Semantics (e.g. Bierwisch 1983, 1988, Bierwisch/Lang 1989, Bierwisch/Schreuder 1992, Härtl
2001, Härtl/Witt 1998, Herweg 1989, Kiparsky 1997, Li 1994, Olsen 1998, Stiebels 1996, Wunderlich 1993; critiqued
in Taylor 1994) espouses a modular divide between Semantic Form (SF) and Conceptual Structure (CS). SF is strictly
compositional and interfaces between CS and syntax, and as such is meant to contain only grammatically relevant
information. A second (and, I suspect, conflicting) criterion for what should be in SF is that it must capture the minimal
common core of meaning of a lexeme. The specification of subsenses of polysemous items under contextual influence
is relevant only at CS. The postulated modular division is said to be a prerequisite for avoiding a proliferation of
stipulated polysemy in lexical items; Herweg 1989 suggests, for instance, that the interpretation of the differing spatial
configurations implied by in in a pipe in my mouth, a worm in the chair, a worm in the cupboard, a bird in a tree etc. is
simply a context-driven inference at CS, which need not be stipulated in the SF of the preposition. (It is unclear to me
whether a modular divide is necessary for this, cf. e.g. the Jackendoff's (1983) 'rules of construal' or Hottenroth 1983,
who is neutral on the modularity issue but posits generalised entries for prepositions which are modified under general
conceptualisation principles.)
Two-Level studies have uniformally assumed that PS interpretations are not part of the SF representation, but are
inferred at CS under contextual influence. This applies e.g. to the identification of the implicit ROs of particle verbs in
Stiebels 1996, Härtl/Witt 1998 and Witt 1998. Representative of these studies is Witt's use of (75) as an entry for
German ein. It is used in formalising e.g. the verbs with a stereotypical RO discussed above in section 6.3. (v is a free
parameter whose value must be fixed at CS through recourse to the context.)
(Witt 1998:44)
(75) λu [BECOME(LOC(U, INT(V)))]
We saw in 6.3 that the ein-combinations are semiproductive and that the possible LOs are in at least some cases
lexically stipulated. This cannot be captured using only a general entry for the particle like that in (75) plus general
inferential strategies at CS. (To maintain the SF in (75) as it stands, ein would additionally need a lexically stipulated
CS representation capturing the specific idiosyncratic facts I have noted. However, this move would undermine any
attempt to use the CS-SF distinction as a way of downsizing the lexicon.) Witt also adopts a narrow conception of what
CS inferences are capable of which turns out to be problematic. Some remarks on p. 41f and 53 suggest that the
contextual specification of the SF occurs by identifying a RO which is the stereotypical internal region for the LO, but
why could CS not use some other inferential strategy to identify the RO? A good candidate for such an inference would
consist in identifying v by coindexing it with some entity in the context. We saw in (29) that the ROs of English particle
verbs can be identified in this fashion. (28) shows some English particle verbs whose RO is supplied by PS
considerations and not by coindexation. Contradictory interpretational strategies are at work in (28) and (29), and it is to
my knowledge impossible to predict which is applicable in a given particle verb. I do not see how general principles of
inference can choose the right strategy if the lexical entries of the particle (verb)s are neutral on the matter.
The problem is more general. Two-Level strategy of positing highly general lexical entries and allowing CS inferences
to cope with the specification of the meaning leads to overgeneration in various other cases. For instance, Witt
(1998:89-96) discusses a large class of ein-verbs where the RO is identified with the LO itself or the object of which the
LO is a part. Examples are das Haus fiel ein "the house fell in", 'the house collapsed' (the house is both LO and RO) and
ich trat die Tür ein 'I kicked the door in' (RO: the room or building into which the door leads). Again, Witt (1998:95f)
argues that the identification of the RO occurs at CS on the basis of the knowledge that the LOs of these particle verbs
are (part of) interior regions. Superficially, this obviates the need to stipulate another use of the particle. However, this
strategy overgenerates when one looks at other constructions refering to an interior region. English in has only a small
and idiosyncratic class of in verbs which parallels the productive German class. One can kick in a door or
(metaphorically) punch someone's head in, a roof can fall in or cave in, but it is hard to increase the list. Several
German examples cited by Witt do not translate into English, and double particles meaning 'in' (rein/herein/hinein)
never convey situations where LO and RO are identical (das Haus fiel rein and its English gloss the house fell in are
uninterpretable, barring abnormal scenes like houses falling into holes). There do not seem to be principled semantic
reasons why rein and English in do not readily lend themselves to coindexing of LO and RO, so Witt's account of the
ein verbs predicts that we would find the same meaning with in and rein. Therefore, Witt's account of the ein verbs can
only be upheld if its (near-) inapplicability to in and rein verbs is stipulated in the lexical entries for the particles,
resulting in an unattractive appeal to unlearnable negative evidence. It thus seems necessary to assume that what Witt
considers to be an inference is actually a subsense of the particle ein in which the RO is specified as being coindexed to
the LO. (The parallel English particle verbs would receive a similar treatment, but one would need to list the verbs with
6.4. Conclusions, additional observations and consequences
In earlier stages of the research described here, I sought to derive all PS readings from independently motivated
differences between expressions. This is feasible for weak PS readings, like those seen with at and over, but is
impossible for strong PS readings like those seen with before, small PP's and particle verbs with ein. The findings about
strong PS readings initially look disappointing, but they are a non-result only if one banishes lexical idiosyncrasy from
the legitimate domains of scientific inquiry, a position unlikely to be a conscious choice among linguists who rate
empirical correctness above aesthetic appeal. Moreover, I suggest that the widespread lexical stipulatation in PS
readings is not completely haphazard, but admits of several generalisations. Alongside the generalisations in section 4, a
case can be made for the tendencies about strong PS readings given in (74):
(74) a. Specialisation to obligatory PS readings is an unmarked direction of diachronic semantic change.
b. Specialisation to obligatory PS readings is more likely in expressions which are in the process of
succumbing to competition from synonymous expressions.
c. Corollary to (a) and (b) and (42): The existence of pairs of expressions which differ in having or lacking a
PS interpretation is optimal from the perspective of language use.
Evidence for (a) and (b) is afforded by the PS-specialised uses of before discussed in 6.1. These uses of before, apt to
sound elevated or archaic, are survivals of a more general range of uses of the preposition which was supplanted by in
front of. Instead of passing into complete disuse, spatial anteriority uses before became confined to uses featuring
interactional PS readings. French en (<Latin in), which mostly has a functional reading, was also formerly capable of
non-functional readings prior to the advent of its synonym dans. Particle verbs also support (74)(a,b). Harnisch 1982,
Hinderling 1982 and Reining 1916 note that German single particle verbs were formerly highly productive and
compositional and that the restriction to what I call PS uses which besets most single particle verbs is a relatively recent
innovation that went hand in hand with the development of the double particle system which took over compositional
and non-PS readings. (74)(a,b) makes sense of the contrast between German and English, which lacks an analogue to
the double particle sytem and thus hardly ever shows obligatory PS readings in particle verbs, barring isolated
exceptions like put on in (28).
(74)(c) is a suggestion, unfortunately hard to test, about why speakers' lexicons accumulate PS-specialised diachronic
junk. The rationale behind it is that the existence of expressions which lexically stipulate PS interpretations can be
exploited as a means of favouring or disfavouring a PS interpretation, thus allowing disambiguation without undue
prolixity or forcing hearers to divine the right interpretation from an unhelpful context. Thus, if a text begins with Amy
was in church, the small PP makes it immediately clear that she was (to be) attending a church service. The nominal
cost of a lexical stipulation that in church has a momentary institutional reading buys us the ability to express the
functional connection between Amy and the church in a mere two words, and, coupled with (42), the ability to
neutralise or cancel the functional reading if in the church or inside the church are chosen ahead of the small PP.
7. PS readings in semantic theories
A more extensive treatment of PS readings would ask how and/or whether they can be treated in one or more semantic
theories. Lacking the space for this, I leave it to proponents of the various theories to integrate (or perhaps improve on)
the observations made here. I do wish to comment on two theories, however. One theory which deserves special
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A. J. McIntyre
which the particle occurs.) This is stipulative, but empirically necessary. The stipulativeness problem is relativised
when we note that this particle use inherits all properties of the basic use of the particle, except that the RO is specified,
suggesting some type of redudancy rule or inheritance hierarchy might be enlisted to reduce the cost of the assumed
polysemy.9
In another example, Herweg (1989:110) formulates a general lexical entry for in which locates the LO within the
space occupied by the RO. The entry deliberately abstracts away from distinguishing cases of partial and full
containment. The default interpretation of the car in the garage (implying complete enclosure) and partial containment
configurations like flowers in vases, lightbulbs in sockets is banished to CS. To make his argumentation convincing,
Herweg would need to discuss prepositions like inside, within and German innerhalb, which could equally well be
described in terms of Herweg's representation for in, but disallow uses involving partial containment. As it stands, the
analysis wrongly allows a CS inference which interprets the flowers inside the vase in conformity with a normal
situation where the upper parts of the flowers protrude from the vase.
The general methodological message applicable to the studies discussed above, and all theorists who try to capture PS
readings as inferences, is as follows. Say that an observationally adequate account of an expression E in a given context
requires one to state two aspects of E's meaning (call them X and Y) and that a researcher is considering whether Y is
perhaps an inference based on X and the context C in which it is embedded. The researcher must consider as many
expressions which apparently contain X as possible (preferably from more than one language) checking whether Y
consistently cooccurs with X. If it does not do so, a necessary condition for maintaining that Y is an inference based on
X and C is a demonstration that the other expressions do not in reality mean X, but something else, or perhaps X plus or
minus Z. If Y does consistently cooccur with X, it could well be an inference based on X and C.
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Jones, M., 1996. Foundations of French Syntax. Cambridge University Press.
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Mouton de Gruyter. 249-291.
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Pustejovsky, J., 1995. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Raffelsiefen, R., 1992. A Nonconfigurational Approach to Morphology. In: Aronoff, M., (ed.) Morphology Now. Albany: State University of New
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Reining, C., 1916. A Study of Verbs Compounded with Aus, Ein, etc. as Contrasted with those Compounded with Heraus, Hinaus, Herein, Hinein, etc.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Sadler, L. & Arnold, D., 1994. Prenominal adjectives and the phrasal/lexical distinction. Linguistics 30: 187-226.
Stiebels, B., 1996. Lexikalische Argumente und Adjunkte. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
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9
The coindexing of LO and RO might also be captured by referring to a larger semiproductive interpretational strategy, for we find it also in some
uses of out (I stretched out, I folded out the map) where the LO is arguably conceptualised as going out of itself. Cf. also together, where members of
an internally individuated LO approach each other (push A and B together, push the parts together), or its German equivalent zusammen, which,
unlike together, additionally allows a metonymy where an object represents its sides, allowing singular LOs (das Haus fiel zusammen "the house fell
together", 'collapsed'; die Karte zusammenfalten "fold the map together", 'fold up the map'.
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