Prepositional Phrases and manner-of-motion verbs in Italian
Valeria Bandecchi
University College Dublin
It is assumed that Italian is exceptional with respect to the Talmyan bipartite typology which
distinguishes two major types of languages called satellite framed languages- where the
verbal root encodes only manner and motion while paths are rendered by other elements
particles or affixes (the so-called satellites) as in (1)-and verb framed languages-which
conflate motion and path in the verbal root and need to employ other means to express
manner-of-motion as in (2).
(1) Mary walked into the room
(2) Maria è andata nella stanza camminando ‘Mary went into the room walking’
Italian, indeed, allows some manner of motion verbs like correre, ‘run’ to express directed
motion with PP complements. When they are used with a prepositional phrase they express
directed motion and they select auxiliary essere ‘be’ as in (3) hence all three components
(Motion, Manner and Path) are expressed by the composition of a verb with a PP and the
overall syntactic structure brings about a path reading;
(3) Maria ѐ corsa a casa ‘Mary ran home’
According to Folli (2008) Italian gives rise to goal of motion constructions in two ways:
I) Verbs as correre allow a directional interpretation and they trigger two different
derivations: one where the verb itself identifies the path of motion and the preposition gives
the final location and one where each one of the two prepositions, making up a complex PPs,
identifies a portion of motion;
II) Verbs as camminare, ‘walk’, which express a non-directional motion, can produce a goal
of motion interpretation only if they are combined with a complex PPs encoding path and
place such as phrases like fino a ‘as far as’, dentro a ‘inside to’ etc.
Folli claims that Italian complex prepositions as fino a have a complex structure as in (4):
(4) Fino a casa ‘as far as home’
PPATHP
PPATH’
PPATH
Fino
PPLACEP
a casa
I claim, in contrast with Folli, that Italian produces goal of motion constructions in only one
way, since Italian lacks accomplishment prepositions which identify each portion of the
motion event and the directionality feature can be identified only by the main verb. I claim
that pure manner verbs such as camminare express activity with complex prepositions such as
dietro a, dentro a ect. and they produce a result reading only with fino a, which isn’t a
dedicated goal marker but an until marker in Beavers et al.’s (2009) terms. The following
empirical evidence supports my claim:
1) Italian complex prepositions appear systematically as complements to stative verbs as in
(5a, 5b);
(5) a Le caramelle si trovano dentro alla scatola ‘The candies are inside the box’
b C’è sempre tanta polvere sotto al tappeto ‘There is always a lot of dust under the carpet’
2) The status of the monosyllabic preposition a in complex prepositions is still controversial.
Even though it denotes the final locating position in goal of motion constructions, it is not a
pure directional preposition like English to, as it can be complement of a stative verb, while to
cannot be (6a, 6b,);
(6) a Marco vive a Londra b.* Mark lives to London
Moreover the interpretation of a depends on the context since it can be referred to point-like
spaces when used with the name of a city as in (6a) or a small island as in (7) or to extended
places as in (8) and it can also appear with infinitives verbs without a locative meaning, e.g.
abituarsi a, ‘to be used to’, cominciare a, ’to begin to’ continuare a, ‘to continue to’, etc.
(7)Marco vive a Capri ‘Mark lives in Capri’
(8)Marco è andato a scuola/ all’università/ al parco ‘Mark went to the
school/university/park’
3) Italian complex prepositions don’t identify a Path head but only a Place head, therefore
they lack a path/process component. I propose the following structure in (9);
(9) Dietro all’albero ‘behind the tree’
PPLACEP
PPLACE P’
PPLACE
Dietro
PPLACE
all’albero
In the prepositional minimal pair of the following type dietro/dietro a, dentro/ dentro a etc. a
expresses a certain locative value further specified by the polysyllabic prepositions as dietro,
since a, by itself, has no locative value;
Italian doesn’t present a satellite-framed behaviour because complex prepositions are
not interpreted as accomplishment and goal of motion interpretation is produced only in one
way: when the verb itself (as correre) identifies the path of motion and the preposition gives
the final location. I conclude in line with Mateu&Rigau (2010), despite many qualifications,
that the following relevant Talmyan generalization can be maintained: [pure manner verbs+
small clause result] constructions are predicted to be systematically absent from Romance.
Italian consistently obeys to the Talmian generalization that non directional manner of motion
verbs do not coappear with non adjunct paths in Romance.
References
•Beavers, J., Wei T.S. and Levin B., (2009). The typology of motion expressions revisited,
Journal of linguistics 46, 331–377.
•Folli, R., (2008), Complex PPs in Italian, in Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P, A. Asbury,J.
Dotlacil, B. Gehrke and R. Nouwen (eds.), pp. 197-220. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
•Mateu, J. and Rigau G., (2010). Verb-particle constructions in Romance: a lexical syntactic
account. Probus 22(2), 241-269.
•Talmy, L., (1985). Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In T.Shopen
(eds.), Language typology and syntactic description (vol. 3), 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
•Talmy,
L., (1991). Path to realization: a typology of event conflation. In L. A. Sutton, C.
Johnson and R. Shields (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Anuual Meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistics Society, 480–519. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
•Talmy, L., (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics, Typology and process in concept
structuring (vol.2), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.