Prepositions and complement selection

Abstract

The analysis of prepositions as syntactic heads, combining typically with a nominal complement, has become standard. In many languages, the behavior of the most common prepositions calls for a reconsideration of the kinds of constraints that heads can impose on their complements. This paper examines data from Polish and French, where the realization of certain prepositions is conditioned by the phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic features of the following material. It is argued that the best approach to such phenomena is the use of lexically specified features that allow prepositions to have indirect access to the relevant properties of the left edge of their complements.