Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P

Reviews / Votes

This splendid spectrum of studies offers a balanced and comprehensive perspective on the syntax and semantics of a surprisingly little-studied lexical category: the adposition. Focusing on the internal structure of spatial adpositional phrases, this volume brings together a variety of different ways of looking at the spatial PP, with interesting connections and valuable points of convergence between the individual case studies. The range of languages covered (including, besides the familiar suspects from Germanic and Romance, such typologically diverse languages as Hebrew, Igbo, Japanese, Persian, Russian, and Zapotec) is impressive and significant; so is the variety of analytical approaches, with cartography, the 'syntax of silence', corpus-based research, pragmatics, formal semantics, and optimality-theoretic work all being represented. One of the central themes pervading this collection of studies is the role and (language-internal as well as cross-linguistic) distribution of functional categories and functional structure in the syntax and semantics of spatial constructs -- including the question of whether adpositions (and particles) are themselves to be treated as lexical or functional elements, or as a mixed, hybrid category, or a mixed bag of heterogeneous elements. This timely and well-crafted volume, the fruit of a productive workshop organized by the editors, pays tribute to the important work that has been done in recent years on the structure of spatial Ps -- indispensable fare for all syntacticians and semanticists, because of the many ways in which the structures projected by spatial Ps inform the analysis of other major constituents. Spatial adpositions are at last getting the attention they deserve. -- Marcel den Dikken, City University of New York