Qualia Structure in Spanish Prepositional Verbs: When the verb resorts to a preposition

Abstract

In generative grammar it is generally assumed that argumental prepositional phrases (PPs) can have two syntactic functions: argument and complement. Contrary to this assumption, I will propose a unified syntactic treatment for all argumental PPs, which I consider more appropriate to account for the main problems they pose. Focusing on Spanish, I will try to explain how the meaning of prepositional verbs is compositionally built by means of a lexical mechanism of coercion. My claim is based on Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon theory, a sophisticated lexicist and generative model of combination of words.