Open AccessGoal-Source Asymmetry and Russian Spatial Prefixes
Author(s) -
E. Markovskaya
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
nordlyd
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1503-8599
pISSN - 0332-7531
DOI - 10.7557/12.81
Subject(s) - locative case , prefix , linguistics , computer science , verb , transitive relation , event structure , event (particle physics) , semantics (computer science) , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , physics , combinatorics , quantum mechanics , programming language
In this paper, I draw on data from Russian to argue for the asymmetry between Goal and Source prepositional phrases. Source prepositional phrases are structurally ambiguous; they can occur both as arguments and adjuncts in certain syntactic contexts. Goal prepositional phrases are unambiguously arguments. I claim that Source prepositions have lexically specified semantics, which determines their relative structural freedom; whereas Goal prepositions are derived from locative prepositions when the building of the event structure takes place and therefore they are bound to be the arguments of the verb