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2.3.PP-complements (prepositional objects)

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This section discusses what we will call prepositional object verbs (PO-verbs), that is, verbs taking a prepositional phrase as their complement. Some examples of such verbs are given in (288). In these examples, the PP-complement is the only internal argument of the verb: since the verb also takes an external argument (realized as the subject of the clause), we will refer to these verbs as intransitive PO-verbs.

288

a.	Jan heeft	op zijn vader	gewacht.
	Jan has	for his father	waited
	'Jan waited for his father.'

b.	Jan heeft	op het hert	geschoten.
	Jan has	at the deer	shot
	'Jan shot at the deer.'

c.	Jan heeft	op de hond van de buurman	gepast.
	Jan has	after the dog of the neighbor	looked
	'Jan has looked after the neighborʼs dog.'

The most conspicuous property of the PP-complements in (288) is that they have a fixed preposition, the choice of which is lexically determined by the verb; substituting any other preposition for the preposition op in these examples results in ungrammaticality. That the verb determines the choice of the prepositions is also clear from the fact that the preposition op in the examples in (288) must be rendered by different prepositions in the English translations of these examples: to wait for; to shoot at; to look after. Furthermore, the prepositions normally do not have a well-defined semantic content, for which reason we will refer to them as functional prepositions. As a result of this lack of semantic content, the meaning of the combination of the verb and its PP-complement is not built up compositionally, but instead listed in the lexicon as a semantic unit.
PP-complements can be found in various syntactic frames. They co-occur not only with external arguments, as in (288), but also with internal arguments. In (289), for instance, we find verbs taking an internal argument that is realized as an accusative object and to which we will therefore refer as transitive PO-verbs.

289

a.	Jan heeft	zijn mening	op	verkeerde informatie	gebaseerd.
	Jan has	his opinion	on	inaccurate information	based
	'Jan based his opinion on inaccurate information.'

b.	Jan heeft	zijn kinderen	tegen	ongewenste invloeden	beschermd.
	Jan has	his children	against	undesirable influences	protected
	'Jan protected his children against undesirable influences.'

c.	Jan heeft	Marie	tot	diefstal	gedwongen.
	Jan has	Marie	to	theft	forced
	'Jan forced Marie to steal.'

Since we have seen in Section 2.1.2 that verbs with a single nominal argument can be either intransitive or unaccusative, it will not come as a surprise that there are also PO-verbs exhibiting unaccusative behavior. Some examples of such unaccusative PO-verbs are given in (290), in which the unaccusative status of the verbs is clear from the fact that they take the perfect auxiliary zijn'to be'.

290

a.	Jan is	over die opmerking	gevallen.
	Jan has	over that remark	fallen
	'Jan took offense at that remark.'

b.	Jan is	van zijn ziekte	hersteld.
	Jan has	from his illness	recovered
	'Jan has recovered from his illness.'

c.	Jan is	bezweken	onder zijn last.
	Jan has	collapsed	under his burden
	'Jan collapsed under his burden.'

Table 7 shows that the three types of PO-verbs in examples (288) to (290) fit in nicely with the classification of verbs on the basis of the nominal arguments discussed in Section 2.1: it simply seems to be the case that some intransitive, transitive and unaccusative verbs can (or must) select an additional PP-complement. We will discuss these verbs in Section 2.3.2.

Table 7: Main types of prepositional object verbs

	external argument	internal arguments		subsection
		NP	PP
intransitive	+	—	+	Section 2.3.2, sub II
transitive	+	+	+	Section 2.3.2, sub I
unaccusative	—	+	+	Section 2.3.2, sub II

It is not the case that all of the verb types that we have distinguished in Section 2.1 can be supplemented with a PP-complement. For instance, we are not aware of clear cases in which ditransitive or nom-dat verbs take an additional PP-complement. This suggests that there is an upper boundary to the number of internal arguments a verb can take: a verb has two internal arguments at the most. This claim may of course be too strong, and potential counterexamples are verbs of exchange like kopen'to buy', verkopen'to sell' and betalen'to pay' in (291), for which it has been claimed that they actually do have three internal arguments.

291

a.		Jan verkocht	het boek	voor tien euro	aan Marie.
		Jan sold	the book	for ten euros	to Marie

b.		Marie kocht	het boek	voor tien euro	van Jan.
		Marie bought	the book	for ten euros	from Jan

c.		Marie betaalde	Jan	tien euro	voor het boek.
		Marie paid	Jan	ten euros	for the book

The suggested generalization above implies that at least one of the presumed arguments in the examples in (291), probably the voor-PP, is an adjunct. Given that the distinction between complements and adjuncts is often not clear, it seems that both the proponents and the opponents for assuming adjunct status for the voor-PP will have a hard time in substantiating their position. Here we will assume that the voor-PPs are adjuncts, because they satisfy the adverb test in (292), which singles out VP adverbs; see the discussion in Section 2.3.1, sub VII, which shows that PP-complements cannot be paraphrased by means of ... en PRONOUN doet dat XP clauses. For more evidence in favor of our claim that the voor-PPs in (291) are adjuncts, we refer the reader to the discussion of example (338) in Section 2.3.2, sub I.

292

a.		Jan verkocht	het boek	aan Marie	en	hij	deed	dat	voor tien euro.
		Jan sold	the book	to Marie	and	he	did	that	for ten euros

b.		Marie kocht	het boek	van Jan	en	ze	deed	dat	voor tien euro.
		Marie bought	the book	from Jan	and	she	did	that	for ten euros

c.		Marie betaalde	Jan	tien euro	en	ze	deed	dat	voor het boek.
		Marie paid	Jan	ten euros	and	she	did	that	for the book

The claim that verbs have two internal arguments at most receives indirect support from the fact that there are verbs taking both a dative argument and a PP-complement, which shows that the non-existence of ditransitive and nom-dat PO-verbs cannot be attributed to the presence of a dative phrase. If a dative argument is present, PP-complements often alternate with nominal complements; the examples in (293) illustrate this type of verb frame alternation.

293

a.		Jan	vertelde	mij	het verhaal.
		Jan	told	me	the story

a'.		Jan vertelde	mij	over de overstroming.
		Jan told	me	about the flood

b.		Jan vroeg	me een beloning.
		Jan asked	me a reward

b'.		Jan vroeg	mij	om een beloning.
		Jan asked	me	for a reward

The examples in (294) show that similar verb frame alternations can be found with certain transitive verbs; see Section 3.3.2 for a more detailed discussion of this alternation.

294

a.		Marie vertrouwt	haar vriend.
		Marie trusts	her friend

b.		Jan eet	zijn brood.
		Jan eats	his bread

a'.	Marie vertrouwt	op haar vriend.
	Marie trusts	on her friend
	'Marie trusts her friend.'

b'.	Jan eet	van zijn brood.
	Jan eats	from his bread
	'Jan is eating from his bread.'

The NPTheme-PP alternation illustrated in (293) and (294) is not possible with all (di-)transitive verbs, and often has a subtle meaning effect. Nevertheless, the nature of the PP-complements seems sufficiently close to that of the nominal complements to merit a separate discussion of such examples, which can be found in Section 2.3.3. Besides the examples discussed so far, there are various other cases that merit discussion and which will be taken up in Section 2.3.4. But before we discuss the individual classes, Section 2.3.1 will discuss some properties that all PO-verb constructions seem to share.

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About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riet Vos

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: Dative ArgumentObjectPO-VerbPP-complementPrepositional ObjectPrepositional ComplementVerb

Version: 1.0, January 2016

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riet Vos	January 2016

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