On Spanish prepositional prefixes and the cartography of prepositions

Despite its potential appeal, the possibility of analyzing prefixes as prepositions (and thus as syntactic objects) faces several problems related with selection, headedness and semantic isomorphism. In this article, I try to understand and solve these problems. I focus on prefixed nouns, and more s...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Antonio Fábregas
Formato: article
Lenguaje:CA
EN
Publicado: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/4c711e17b2154573853ebc23b91595ec
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Despite its potential appeal, the possibility of analyzing prefixes as prepositions (and thus as syntactic objects) faces several problems related with selection, headedness and semantic isomorphism. In this article, I try to understand and solve these problems. I focus on prefixed nouns, and more specifically on the fact that some of them have their bases interpreted as grounds (precoma, ‘something before a coma’), while others have them interpreted as figures (pre-cognition, ‘cognition before something’). I will propose that in the structures where the base can be interpreted as figure or ground the prefix is a very low prepositional modifier of the noun and the two readings depend on the interpretation of a pronominal category introduced by the preposition. This configuration is forced by the absence of a functional category from the preposition’s structure; when independent conditions force this functional category to be present, the figure reading is impossible and the prefix behaves as a preposition.