Some Observations on the Syntax of

Adpositions of Movement

Ludo Melis
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

This paper discusses the internal structure of adpositional phrases and provides evidence for
the view that, even when analyzing one single language, distinct syntactic patterns need to be
set up in order to cope adequately with the data. The focus of the paper is on prepositions of
movement in French. It is shown that, for a the case at hand, at least six patterns need te be
distinguished. Section 1 presents the standard view of prepositions as the lexical head of a PP;
in section 2, it is shown that this view is appropriate for handling most instances of preposi-
tions of movement. The remainder of this paper discusses various cases where the standard
view does not hold. Section 3 deals with two instances where prepositions of movement do not
have the properties of a head, namely, when they function as case markers or as co-heads to the
noun. Sections 4–6 treat three additional patterns; they involve the use of prepositions as non-
subordinating interpositions, as particles tightly linked to the higher predicate, and as specifiers
of another preposition. The final section (7) will present a number of conclusions that may be
drawn from these observations.

1. Prepositions: The standard view

According to dictionaries of linguistics and standard textbooks, a preposition is

a member of “the set of items which typically precede noun phrases … to form
a single constituent or structure” (Crystal 1991: 275). A general dictionary
defines prepositions as follows: “All prepositions take an object. The prepo-
sition and its object form a prepositional group” (Cobuild, s.v. PREP). Both
definitions indicate that the preposition is the lexical head of a phrase, taking a
noun phrase as its object. In addition, the preposition—and thus the preposi-
tional phrase—is said to depend on an external head (X in (1)) to which it sub-
ordinates its object, the NP in (1) (Denis and Sancier-Chateau 1994: 441).
These characteristics may be captured by the following representation:
60 LUDO MELIS

(1) [ X [ P [ N ]NP ]PP ] XP

For Tremblay (1999), pattern (1), or any equivalent representation in another

syntactic framework than X-bar constituent structure, is the only appropriate
definition of a preposition; that is, it is nothing but a syntactic entity. In one
respect, though, the representation under (1) is too restrictive: it only allows for
NPs as objects of prepositions; as indicated by Huddleston and Pullum (2002:
518), the inventory of possible objects is larger, and consequently (1) would
have to be reformulated. In this paper, however, I will focus on prepositions
followed by NP objects.
Representation (1) captures several properties of a PP (cf. Melis 2001):

a. P and its object form one single constituent, which can be inferred from
the fact that they must move as one unit; cf. (2a), and its grammatical and
ungrammatical variants (2b) and (2c), respectively:

(2) a. Jean a fait cela pendant les vacances.

John has done this during the holidays
‘John has done this during the holidays.’
b. C’ est pendant les vacances que Jean a fait cela.
it is during the holidays that John has done this
c. *C’ est les vacances que Jean a fait cela pendant.
it is the holidays that John has done this during

b. P imposes constraints on the syntactic and semantic properties of the NP;

the NP thus subcategorizes P (3) and is selected by it (4):

(3) a. Jean fera cela pendant le repas.

John do.FUT.3SG this during the meal
‘John will do this during he meal.’
b. Jean fera cela pendant qu’ ils mangent.
John do.FUT.3SG this during that they eat
‘John will do this while they are eating.’
c. *Jean fera cela pendant manger.
John do.FUT.3SG this during eat.INF
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 61

(4) a. Françoise viendra pendant la journée et Julie

Françoise come.FUT.3SG during the daytime and Julie
pendant la nuit.
during the night
‘Françoise will come during the daytime and Julie during the
night.’
b. *Françoise viendra pendant le jour et Julie
Françoise come.FUT.3SG during the day and Julie
pendant la nuit.
during the night

c. The NP object is unique (5) and obligatory (6): there is one single object
(5) and it is obligatory (6).

(5) Jean fera cela pendant la pause de midi

John do.FUT.3SG this during the break of noon
*(ou) celle du soir.
(or) that of.the evening

(6) * Jean fera cela pendant.

John do.FUT.3SG this while

d. As the head of the PP, P may be preceded by a degree adverb (7):

(7) Le livre était presque sous l’ armoire.

the book was almost under the cupboard
‘The book was almost under the cupboard.’

e. The PP is the domain for a number of syntactic operations, such as

extraction, which is not allowed in French by the PP-Island constraint
(Jones 1996: 39):

(8) a. Jean a fait cela pendant les vacances de Julie.

John has done this during the holidays of Julie
‘John has done this during Julie’s holidays.’
b. * Julie de qui Jean a fait cela pendant les vacances
Julie of whom Jean has done this during the holidays
était ravie.
was delighted
62 LUDO MELIS

f. As the head of the PP, P determines not only the category of the PP, but
also its integration in paradigms of pro-forms (9) and its semantic type
(10):

(9) a. Jean a fait cela pendant les vacances/alors.

‘John has done this during the holidays/then.’
b. Quand Jean a-t-il fait cela?
when John has-T-he done this
When has John done this?

(10) Jean a fait cela pendant/pour les vacances.

‘John has done this during/for the holidays.’

g. The selection by the external head X operates on P, as head of the PP (cf.

11), and is possibly subcategorized by P (cf. 12):

(11) a. Jean a cherché la solution pendant deux heures.

John has looked.for the solution for two hours
‘John has looked for the solution for two hours.’
b. Jean a trouvé la solution en deux heures.
John has found the solution in two hours
‘John has found the solution in two hours’ time.’
a.' * Jean a cherché la solution en deux heures.
John has looked.for the solution in two hours
b.' * Jean a trouvé la solution pendant deux heures.
John has found the solution for two hours

(12) a. Je compte sur mes amis.

I count on my friends
‘I am counting on my friends.’
b. Je compte avec mes ennemis.
I count with my enemies
‘I am taking my enemies into account.’
c. Je compte mes amis.
I count my friends
‘I am counting my friends.’
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 63

In the remainder of this paper, I will examine whether various ‘prepo-

sitions’ of movement exhibit the same properties and may thus be represented
by schema (1).

2. Prepositions of movement as lexical heads of the PP

It should not be surprising that the properties associated with schema (1) are
observed in a majority of cases, as in (13) and (14), with its Ps dans, en, and
sur, and its PPs dans la maison, en ville, and sur la table.

(13) Il pénètre dans la maison / en ville.

he enters in the house / in city
‘He enters the house/the city.’

(14) Il dépose le livre sur la table.

he puts the book on the table
‘He puts the book on the table.’

a. Example (15) indicates that the PP dans la maison should be considered

a single constituent: when dans la maison in (13) moves as a unit, it leads
to the grammatical variant (15a); when separate parts of the constituent
move independently, this leads to the ungrammatical variants (15b) and
(15c).

(15) a. C’ est dans la maison qu’ il pénètre.

it is in the house that he enters
b. *C’est la maison qu’il pénètre dans.
c. *C’est dans qu’il pénètre la maison.

b. The sentences in (16) and (17) exemplify the syntactic and semantic con-
straints the P imposes on its NP object: en requires a bare noun and chez
an animate noun:

(16) * Il pénètre en la ville / chez la maison.

he enters in the city / in the house
64 LUDO MELIS

(17) a. La route pénètre en ville.

‘The road enters the city.’
b. Il pénètre chez Marie.
he enters by Mary
‘He enters Mary’s house.’

c. As is evidenced in (18), the NP object is obligatory. The grammaticality

of (19) is not a counterargument, because of the differences between
dans and dedans, sur and dessus, respectively (cf. Berthonneau 1999):

(18) a. * Il pénètre dans.

he enters in
b. * Il dépose sur.
he puts on

(19) a. Il pénètre dedans.

he enters inside
‘He enters it.’
b. Je les ai déposés dessus.
I them have put on.top
‘I put them on top.’

Despite the fact that dans may have two objects, one preceding and one
following it (20), such a construction is not found when the preposition
functions as a preposition of movement (21):

(20) Ils se regardent les yeux dans les yeux.

they REFL look the eyes in the eyes
‘They look each other in the eyes.’

(21) *Il pénètre la maison dans la maison.

he enters the house in the house

For sur in combination with déposer, things are more complicated, as is

illustrated by (22) and (23)—I will return to this problem in section 5.

(22) *Il dépose le livre table sur table.

he puts the book table on table
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 65

(23) Il dépose dossier sur dossier.

‘He puts file upon file.’

d. An adverb of degree, functioning as a specifier, may precede the prepo-

sition of movement, as is illustrated in (24):

(24) Il pénètre presque / à peine / loin dans la maison.

he enters almost / hardly / far in the house
‘He almost/hardly enters the house/He goes far into the house.’

e. As can be seen from (25), the PP-Island constraint is observed by prepo-

sitions of movement:

(25) *Il en pénètre dans la chambre. [de l’ appartement

he of.it enters in the room [ of the apartment
voisin]
neighbor]
‘*He enters the (bed)room of it.’ [i.e., of the neighbor’s apartment]

f. As can be seen from (26), the preposition dans is linked to the adverbial
pro-forms y ‘there’ and où? ‘where?’. Furthermore, the preposition
determines the semantic make-up of the noun phrase: in (27), sur le
bureau invokes an image of a piece of furniture and focuses on its sur-
face, while in (28), au bureau denotes a place associated with certain
typical activities.

(26) a. Il pénètre dans la mosquée.

‘He enters the mosque.’
b. Il y pénètre.
he there enters
‘He enters it.’
c. Où pénètre-t-il?
where enters-T-he
‘Where/What does he enter?’

(27) Il dépose les papiers sur le bureau.

‘He puts the papers on the desk.’
66 LUDO MELIS

(28) Il dépose les papiers au bureau.

‘He puts the papers in the office.’

g. Finally, the preposition is selected by the verb, as can be observed from

the ungramaticality of (29); and the preposition subcategorizes the verb,
as indicated by the contrast between (26) and (30): in combination with a
preposition of movement (26), the meaning of pénétrer is ‘to enter, to go
into’ and with a direct object such as in (30) the same verb means ‘to get
to the bottom of’.

(29) *Il pénètre au toit.

he enters on.the roof

(30) a. Il pénètre ses pensées.

he enters her thoughts
‘He gets to the bottom of/understands the deepest of her
thoughts.’
b. Il les pénètre.
he them enters
‘He gets to the bottom of them.’

3. Prepositions of movement as markers or co-heads on the

NP

The classical view of prepositions as lexical heads accounts for most of the
cases in French involving prepositions of movement. In a number of instances,
though, the noun appears to be the head or to assume head-like properties,
requiring other syntactic patterns to be set up. In this section, I will discuss (i)
prepositions as case markers (section 3.1), (ii) preposition as markers of figu-
rative use and of aspect (section 3.2), and (iii) prepositions as co-heads to the
noun (section 3.3).

3.1 Prepositions as case markers

In classical French grammar (sixteenth and seventeenth century), French was

regarded as a case language in which the genitive is marked by de and the
dative by à (Swiggers 1985); in more recent traditional syntactic descriptions,
such as de Boer (1926), prepositions are said to be case markers when they
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 67

introduce indirect or dative objects and prepositional objects. For datives, this
analysis is advocated in the generative framework by Kayne (1975) and Jaeggli
(1982).
The view of prepositions as case markers rather than lexical heads is
represented in a non-technical way in (31). This analysis may also be rendered
by the representation in (32): the preposition is seen as a member of a func-
tional class, K, and heads a functional projection KP or case-marked noun
phrase (see, e.g., Radford 1997).

(31) [ X [ [ P ] N ]NP ]XP

(32) [ X [ K [ N ]NP ]KP ]XP

Let us consider dative à in relation to verbs of movement, as illustrated in (33):

(33) Il est venu une idée à ma collègue.

there is come an idea to my colleague
‘My colleague had/came up with/hit on an idea.’

Corroboration for the fact that the noun is the head of the phrase can be found
in the pronominal substitution of the pronoun lui—and not of the adverb y—for
à ma collègue, as in (34). Furthermore, a predicative adjunct may be associated
with the pronoun (35), and is marginally acceptable with the case-marked NP
(36), thus constituting an apparent violation of the PP-Island constraint:

(34) Il lui est venu une idée.

there to.him/her is come an idea
‘She/He had/came up with/hit on an idea.’

(35) Lors de cette réunion tardive, nous n’avions pas réussi à trouver
une solution acceptable à ce problème d’analyse. Ne parvenant pas
à trouver le sommeil, il lui est venu une idée brillante: ...
‘At this late meeting, we were not able to find an acceptable solu-
tion to this problem. As he/she was having trouble falling asleep,
he/she had this brilliant idea: …’
?
(36) Ne parvenant pas à trouver le sommeil, il est venu quelques heures
plus tard une idée brillante à ma collègue: ...
As he/she was having trouble falling asleep, my colleague a few
hours later had this brilliant idea: …
68 LUDO MELIS

In addition, it must be observed that, in contrast to the characteristics of prepo-

sitions discussed in sections 1 and 2, the dative preposition cannot be accom-
panied by a specifier of degree, that it does not allow for contrast or focus, and
that it does not interact with the noun in order to express a specific locative
meaning.

3.2 Prepositions as markers of other functions

As we have seen, the dative preposition à does not serve as the head of a PP
introducing an adverbial, directional object to the verb of movement, but it
serves to mark an indirect object NP. I will now discuss two other cases where
the preposition loses its locative-directional function, and where it may operate
as a marker of figurative use or as a marker of aspect.
Prepositions may function as markers of figurative use in constructions
involving verbs of movement + infinitive, that is, in constructions where an
infinitive occupies the slot of a directional PP (compare (37)–(38) and (39)–
(40)). In their basic usage, the verbs of movement take a bare infinitive (see
Lamiroy 1983 for intransitive verbs of movement, and Melis 1982 for transi-
tive verbs). In combination with an inanimate subject, some verbs of move-
ment also convey a figurative meaning; in this case, both the directional PP and
the infinitive are introduced by à. This is the case for conduire and mener:

(37) Gontran conduit / mène Gudule à sa leçon de piano.

Gontran takes / brings Gudule to her lesson of piano
‘Gontran takes Gudule to her piano lesson.’

(38) Gontran conduit / mène Gudule prendre sa leçon de piano.

Gontran takes / brings Gudule take her lesson of piano.
‘Gontran takes Gudule to her piano lesson.’

(39) Cela nous conduit / mène à la conclusion suivante.

this us takes / brings to the conclusion following
‘This leads (us) to the following conclusion.’

(40) Cela nous conduit / mène à rejeter l’hypothèse.

this us leads / brings to reject the.hypothesis
‘This leads us to reject the hypothesis.’
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 69

It can be observed that in (38), the verb of movement + infinitive allows a

directional interpretation in the absence of the preposition à. In contrast, in
(40), the preposition with the infinitive does not encode a directional inter-
pretation; rather, the preposition marks the figurative reading and is thus an
instance of formal strengthening in the context of metaphor (Lamiroy 1987).
Finally, note that the pro-form y and the interrogative adverb où? may apply to
both constructions. The presence of a preposition does not affect the, otherwise
rather marginal, inclusion of the infinitive in an adverbial paradigm.
A second case in which à loses its locative-directional function involves
a number of verbs such as atteindre, which may take both a direct object (41)
and a prepositional object (42). The same nouns are allowed in both contexts
and the basic meaning of the verb, ‘to reach’, is preserved in both cases:

(41) a. Il atteint enfin la côte.

he reaches finally the coast
‘He finally reaches the coast.’
b. Le lion atteint sa proie.
the lion reaches its prey
‘The lion gets to its prey.’
c. Elle atteint la vérité.
she reaches the truth
‘She gets to the truth.’

(42) a. Il était près d’ atteindre à la côté.

he was close.to reach to the coast
‘He was getting close to the coast.’
b. les efforts qu’ il fait pour atteindre à sa proie
(quoted from Trésor de la langue françcaise)
the efforts that it makes for reach to its prey
‘the efforts it makes to get to its prey’
c. Comment a-t-il pu atteindre à la vérité?
how has-T-he been.able to.reach to the truth
‘How has he been able to/could he get to the truth?’

The parallelism between both sets of examples indicates that the verb selects
the noun phrase in a direct way; the preposition does not serve as an inter-
mediate stage and does not conform to the general pattern illustrated in (11)–
(12). Moreover, the directional meaning resides in the interaction of the verb
and the noun phrase. The contribution of the preposition to the overall meaning
70 LUDO MELIS

is related to aspectual matters. In the direct construction in (41), the movement

reaches the goal, and in the prepositional construction in (42), the reaching of
the goal is imminent.
Unlike the case of conduire and mener in (37)–(40), the opposition
between the direct and the oblique object construction with atteindre in (41)–
(42) is correlated with a formal distinction. In (41), atteindre is a regular tran-
sitive verb, taking a direct object with the typical object clitic le (cf. Il l’atteint
enfin [he it reaches finally] ‘He finally reaches it’), and in (42), the verb takes
an adverbial object belonging to the paradigm of y (cf. Il était près d’y attein-
dre [he was close to there reach] ‘He was getting close to reaching it’). The two
cases discussed in this section are thus not fully equivalent, nor are they analo-
gous to the dative case discussed in 3.1, where the à NP constituent enters a
nominal paradigm. In view of this difference, the patterns in (31)–(32) cannot
satisfactorily account for the observations made here, nor is pattern (1) appro-
priate. The cases discussed in this section, then, occupy an intermediate posi-
tion between the regular PP, presented in sections 1 and 2, and the case-marked
NP discussed in 3.1.

4.3 Prepositions as co-heads to the noun

In the various cases presented in sections 3.1 and 3.2, the contribution of the
preposition to the expression of movement is very limited. Its role is more
important in the two types of patterns to be examined in this section; they
involve verbs of movement that impose a fixed preposition, as well as restric-
tions on the noun which are independent of the preposition itself.
The verb accoler provides an interesting case in point; the preposition is
always à, and the selection of the noun with à depends on the semantic class of
the object noun:

(43) Il a accolé un garage à sa maison.

he has put.beside a garage to his house
‘He has added a garage on to his house.’

(44) On a accolé cette épithète ridicule à son nom.

one has put.beside this epithet ridiculous to his/her name
‘They have added this ridiculous epithet to his/her name.’

This constraint, which is reminiscent of similar cases with verbs of equivalence

such as comparer ‘to compare’, opposer ‘to oppose’, and ressembler ‘to
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 71

resemble’ (Melis 1996), can only be accounted for if one accepts that the
selection by the verb may directly affect the preposition and the noun, and does
not follow the normal hierarchical way sketched in section 1, whereby the verb
selects the preposition, which, in turn, selects the depending noun.
Other verbs, such as accéder ‘have/get/give access to, reach’ and acculer
‘force to’, exhibit analogous phenomena in their figurative uses:

(45) a. Il a accédé au trône.

he has gained.access to.the throne
‘He has come to the throne.’
b. Il a accédé à sa demande.
he has given.access to his/her demand
‘He has met his/her demand.’

(46) On l’ a acculé à la capitulation.

one him/her has forced to the surrender
‘They have forced him/her to surrender’.

The specific interpretations of the verb depend on the type of noun, thus pro-
viding evidence that there is direct link between verb and noun, with the prepo-
sition serving only to mark the oblique character of the object.
In order to deal with the observations made above, it seems necessary to
abandon the hypothesis that the PP has a single head, either a preposition (see
sections 1 and 2) or a noun (section 3.1), and thus to give up a basic assump-
tion in current syntactic theory, namely, that of the endocentric nature of con-
stituents. The observations provide arguments in favor of a representation
allowing for two heads, the preposition and the noun, whereby each accounts
for some of the features, and thus provides an argument for accepting, at least
in some cases, an exocentric structure:

(47) [ X [ P NP ]]

The prepositional head accounts for the paradigmatic aspects, as revealed by

the pro-forms, and is responsible, inter alia for the PP-Island constraint; the
noun as head is compatible with the facts about selection by the verb.
72 LUDO MELIS

4. ‘Prepositions’ as interpositions

In the classical view presented in section 1, the relation between the external
head, the preposition, and its object is asymmetrical, with the external head
occupying a higher position in the sentence structure. However, there are also
cases in which the preposition functions as an interposition between two con-
stituents of the same level, thus resembling a conjunction, as in pattern (48):

(48) [ [ SN ] P [ SN ] ]

Evidence in favor of such an interpretation is provided by the plural concord in

(49) and (50):

(49) Le murmure des sources avec le hennissement des licornes se

mêlent à leurs voix. (Flaubert)
‘The murmuring of the sources and the whinnying of the unicorns
mix with their voices.’

(50) Bertrand avec Raton, l’un Singe et l’autre Chat, Commensaux d’un
logis, avaient un commun maître. (la Fontaine)
‘Bertrand and Raton, one a monkey, the other a cat, table compa-
nions of a house, had a common master.’

This particular use of a preposition, which establishes a symmetrical relation,

was termed ‘interposition’ by Melis (2000). In most cases, interpositions relate
two identical bare nouns in order to obtain an iterative or intensive effect
(Borillo 1995):

(51) Il entend jour après jour les mêmes plaintes.

he listens.to day after day the same complaints.
‘He listens to the same complaints day after day.’

(52) Il commet gaffe sur gaffe.

he makes mistake on mistake
‘He makes one mistake after the other.’

(53) Elle oppose avec succès argument à argument.

she counters with success argument to argument
‘She succesfully counters one argument after the other.’
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 73

As far as their syntax is concerned, each of the constituents containing an

interposition in (51)–(53) differs substantially. In (51), the whole phrase serves
as a adverbial denoting iterative aspect; the preposition links up the two nouns
and is the head of the constituent, conferring upon it its grammatical category.
In (52), the interpositional phrase serves as the direct object of commettre; the
preposition is only the linking element between the two nouns and the whole
phrase has the status of an NP, as appears from pronominalization by les. The
constituent argument à argument in (53) is even more complex: although it is
one constituent by all standard tests (Melis 2000), it fills the two argument
positions of the verb. The function of the preposition is twofold: on the one
hand, it serves as the linking element between the two nouns, thus giving rise
to the iterative effect; on the other hand, it is the marker of the indirect object
and as such only related to the second noun.
Example (23), repeated here as (54), and examples (55) and (56) also
contain a preposition used as interposition in combination with a verb of
movement:

(54) Il dépose dossier sur dossier.

‘He puts file upon file.’

(55) Il empile table sur table.

he piles.up table on table
‘He is stacking up (the) tables.’

(56) Ils courent l’un après l’autre.

‘They run one after the other.’

The N Prep N phrase forms a single constituent, as appears from the ungram-
maticality of (57):

(57) a. *C’est sur dossier qu’il dépose dossier.

b. *C’est table qu’il empile sur table.

In (54) and (55), the interpositional constituent occupies both the direct object
slot and the slot of the directional object. As such, they are analogous to (53),
in that the preposition performs a double function in one single constituent
paradoxically filling two syntactic slots. The case of (56) is slightly different:
l’un après l’autre is a marker of reciprocity which is an anaphor to the subject,
74 LUDO MELIS

but it also fills the slot of the optional directional object; in that respect, it
resembles mutatis mutandis the interposition phrase in (52).

5. Prepositions or particles of movement?

In languages such as Dutch (van Riemsdijk 1978; Beeken 1993), adpositions of

movement are, in various cases, so strongly linked to the verb that they form a
phrasal verb. The relationship between the three components may be repre-
sented as (58), bearing in mind that P and NP may be inversely ordered (59)
and that they do not have to occur in juxtapostion (60):

(58) [ [ X + P ] SN ] SX

(59) Hij rijdt de wagen de garage in.

he drives the car the garage into
‘He drives the car into the garage.’

(60) De garage rijdt hij in.

the garage drives he into
‘It is the garage he is driving into.’

A sentence such as (60) suggests that in Dutch, the P and NP belong to differ-
ent constituents; sentence (61), however, indicates that P and NP may also
form one single constituent occupying the first, preverbal, position in the sen-
tence (cf. Haseryn et al. 1997: 508; Vandeweghe 2000):

(61) De garage in rijdt hij altijd zelf.

the garage into drives he always himself
‘It is into the garage that he always drives himself.’

It is generally agreed upon that French, unlike Dutch, does not have postpo-
sitions or particles with verbs of movement, as in (61) and (59)–(60), respec-
tively. There are some cases, however, where an analysis along the lines of
pattern (58) seems to be the only one available.
The first case, exemplified by (62) and (63), is characterized by the
combination V + P without a noun phrase:
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 75

(62) Il n’est pas un homme qui se complaît, qui accepte, qui se morfond,
pour qui la torpeur succède au sommeil, l’amertume à la ferveur,
qui reste dans. Il est un homme qui va à. (Vailland, cited Cervoni
1991 : 93).
‘He is not the type of man who finds pleasure in things, who seems
resigned to his fate, who gets bored and depressed, for whom
torpor follows sleep and bitterness follows fervor, who stays in. He
is a man who goes for it (lit. who goes to).’

(63) C’est l’analogue de l’amour, une aspiration vers. (Barrès,

cited Grevisse-Goosse 1993, §992).
‘It is like love, an aspiration toward.’

The hypothesis of a null anaphoric object is not appropriate for syntactic

reasons, in that the prepositions à and vers never occur without an object and
that dans is replaced by the adverb dedans; nor is it appropriate for semantic
and textual reasons: it is not possible to infer the object from the context. The
hypothesis that aller à or rester dans constitute phrasal verbs or that aspiration
vers is a deverbal noun linked to a phrasal verb seems justified, because it
offers an explanation for the specific semantic role of the preposition-particle.
As Ilinski (2004: 271) states about example (62), “la préposition ne servant ici
qu’à expliciter et à renforcer l’idée du verbe aller opposé au verbe rester dont
l’idée est renforcée à son tour par la préposition dans” [The preposition à only
serves to make explicit and reinforce the idea of the verb to go as opposed to
the verb to stay, the meaning of which is strengthened by dans]. In the absence
of the prepositional particles à and dans, the meaning of the verbs aller and
rester would remain unclear; in particular, aller would lose its directional
meaning component and mean either ‘to walk’ or ‘to feel’.
The second case is exemplified by (64) and involves coordination:

(64) Ils avaient l’ air d’aller à ou de sortir de

they had the impression of.go to or of leave from
la messe. (Cl. Simon, Frantext)
the mass
‘They seemed to be going to or returning from church.’

The expected form of the sentence would be (65), containing a canonical PP as

object to the first verb of movement and an anaphoric pronoun as object to the
second verb.
76 LUDO MELIS

(65) Ils avaient l’air d’aller à la messe ou

they had the.impression of.go to the mass or
d’ en sortir.
of from.it leave
‘They seemed to be going to church or returning from it.’

In example (64), the NP la messe is shared by both à and de, and is thus sepa-
rated from à, which, in turn, is attracted by the verb aller. The presence of à is
needed for syntactic reasons: as a verb of movement, aller has to be followed
by a directional PP or a bare infinitive introducing the goal. The hypothesis that
à introduces a null object cannot be put forward: à is normally followed by an
object and if there was a null object, it would have to be cataphoric, which is
impossible in this pattern.
A third case involves the formation of fixed lexical expressions, as in
(66):

(66) “Square Montjoie” – 10 200 F/m² – prix à partir de, hors parking.
(advertisement, cited in Ilinski 2004: 272)
‘“Square Montjoie” – 10 200 F/m2 – price starting at, parking not
included.’

The expression in bold serves to indicate that the given price is the bottom
price. Such lexicalizations seem to be semi-productive as witnessed by the two
following quotations, involving prepositions that do not express movement:

(67) La plupart du temps la référence temporelle de la phrase est

incluse (comme partie de) dans la référence temporelle de
l’expression temporelle. (J. Moeschler, cited in Ilinski 2004: 273)
‘Most of the time, the temporal reference of the sentence is inclu-
ded (as a part of) in the temporal reference of the temporal expres-
sion.’

(68) Or, si l’apparence n’est ni apparence-de (d’un être), ni apparence-

pour (pour un être), mais si elle est “pure” (comme dit Alain) ou
absolue, n’étant plus délimitée par des êtres, elle est le Tout, et dès
lors, “tout change”, panta rhei, ce qui est le mot d’Héraclite. (M.
Conche, Magazine Littéraire, January 2001, 21)
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 77

‘But, if appearance is not appearance-of (of a being), or appear-

ance-for (for a being), but if it is “pure” (as Alain states) or abso-
lute, not being confined by beings, it is Everything, and, as a result,
“everything changes”, panta rhei, which is the word of Heraclite’.

The last example clearly shows how new fixed expressions are coined and
what the contribution of the preposition-particle to the overall meaning is.
From the foregoing, it has become clear that, although the formation of a
phrasal verb or a complex unit ‘noun + preposition’ does not regularly occur in
French, it is an actual possibility exploited in a number of cases, particularly
when the presence of the preposition is necessary for the interpretation of the
verb or noun it depends on.

6. Prepositions as pre-modifiers of other prepositions

A final pattern not covered by the canonical pattern in (1) involves the combi-
nation of two prepositions. Four different types of combination P + P are to be
distinguished.
In the first type, exemplified in (69)–(71), the first preposition takes a PP
as object. This pattern is fully in accordance with the expanded version of basic
pattern (1).

(69) Il vient de devant/derrière/à côté de/en face de la maison.

‘He is coming from in front of/behind/beside/opposite the house.’

(70) Il lève la tête de sur le magazine qu’ il

he lifts the head from on the magazine that he
feint de lire.
pretends from read
‘He lifts his head up from behind the magazine which he pretends
to be reading.’

(71) Il est passé par derrière la maison.

he is passed by behind the house
‘He passed/went behind the house.’
78 LUDO MELIS

In the second type, the second preposition loses some of its features and
tends to be reinterpreted as a noun; this frequently happens with chez ‘by,
with’—particularly in combination with a personal pronoun, whereby the
whole phrase takes the meaning ‘home’ (cf. 72). Incidentally, it is striking that
chez may be preceded by a determiner, which is indicative of its noun-like
properties (73):

(72) a. Il est allé à côté de/devant/derrière/en face de/jusque/vers

he is gone beside/in front of/behind/across.from/as.far.as/to
chez moi.
with/by me
‘He went next door/He went in front of/behind/across from/
up to/to my house.’
b. Ce bruit venait de chez lui.
this noise came from with/by him
‘This noise came from his house.’

(73) a. à chacun son chez soi

to each his/her with/by oneself
‘to everyone their own house’
b. Rien ne vaut un chez soi. (Grand Robert)
nothing not is.worth a with/by oneself
‘Nothing is better than home.’

In a third type, which is more interesting, the first preposition is to be

taken as a marker of degree affecting the second, which is the regular head of
the PP. Jusque, which may occur as a regular preposition on its own (cf. 74) or
in combination with à and a personal pronoun (cf. 75), may also precede a
preposition either to indicate the fact that the movement has attained its very
target, as in (76)–(78), or to introduce a limiting case; thus adding an argu-
mentative or pragmatic value to the sentences (cf. 79):

(74) Le train va jusque Liège.

‘The train goes as far as Liège.’

(75) La lumière n’ était pas encore arrivée jusqu’ à nous.

the light not was NEG yet arrived as.far.as to us.
‘The light had not yet reached us.’
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 79

(76) a. Il nous a conduit(e)s jusqu’ à l’école/la barrière.

he us has taken as.far.as to the school/the barrier.
‘He has taken us as far as the school/the barrier.’
b. Il a bu le calice jusqu’ à la lie.
he has drunk the cup as.far.as to the dregs
‘He drained the cup to the dregs.’

(77) Il est venu jusque chez lui / jusque dans la maison/

he is come as.far.as by him / as.far.as in the house /
jusque devant l’ église.
as.far.as in.front.of the church
‘He has come as far as his house/as far as inside the house/in front
of the church.’

(78) Il a cherché jusque sous les fauteuils /

he has looked as.far.as under the sofas
jusque derrière les rideaux.
as.far.as behind the curtains
‘He has looked even under the chairs/even behind the curtains.’

(79) Il a cherché partout, jusqu’ en Ardenne.

he has looked everywhere as.far.as in Ardenne
‘He has looked everywhere, even in Ardenne.’

The preposition jusque as a marker of argumentative value combined with à

may also affect objects (80) and even subjects (81):

(80) Il a examiné jusqu’ à la moindre note de frais.

he has examined as.far.as to the least slip of expenses
‘He has examined even the least expense slip.’

(81) Tout le monde était là. Jusqu’ à la grand-mère

all the world was there as.far.as to the grandmother
avait fait le déplacement.
had done the trip
‘Everyone was present; even the grandmother had made the trip.’

In some cases par also functions as a marker of degree, indicating that the
localization is approximate.
80 LUDO MELIS

(82) Cette variété s’ est répandue par chez nous.

this variety REFL is spread around by/with us
‘This variety is very common in/around our area.’

In order to handle those cases, a new pattern has to be defined:

(83) [ [ P ]SPEC P [ X ] ]PP

The fourth type involves two PPs, as in (84) and (85):

(84) Hier, je suis revenu à pied de la maison ... de

yesterday I am returned to foot from the house of
chez maman à chez moi. (Damourette and Pichon §3017)
by mother to by me
‘Yesterday, I returned on foot from my mother’s house to my
home.’

(85) Il veut aller de Paris à Lima en vol direct.

he wants go from Paris to Lima in flight direct
‘He wants to go from Paris to Lima by direct flight.’

Against Riegel (1994: 227), who posits two independent PPs, the complex de
... à forms one single constituent, as can be seen from the cleft construction in
(86).

(86) C’est de Paris à Lima qu’il veut aller en vol direct.

‘It is from Paris to Lima that he wants to go by direct flight.’

The second PP is the nucleus; à subcategorizes the verb, and de NP is optional:

(87) a. Il veut aller à Lima en vol direct.

‘He wants to go to Lima by direct flight.’
b. *Il veut aller de Lima en vol direct.
he wants go from Lima in flight direct

It could be posited, then, that de NP in (85) is an adjunct to à NP, specifying

the location of the source of the movement. However, the fact that de NP may
constitute a separate cleft seems to be a counterargument to the proposed
analysis:
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 81

(88) C’est de Paris qu’il veut aller à Lima en vol direct.

‘It is from Paris that he wants to go to Paris by direct flight.’

Then, again, de Paris in (88) is not entirely similar to de Paris in (85), as the
former is related to the more complex phrases à partir de Paris, partant de
Paris, whereas the latter may not be made more explicit by adding such for-
mulas.

7. Concluding remarks

The huge diversity of patterns observed in the data for French calls for a re-
appraisal of the traditional account of prepositions.
One approach to reassessing the traditional account of prepositions would
be to maintain the standard definition (see (1)) in order to characterize the word
class, but to regard the other usages as instances of an occasional transfer of a
particular preposition to another word class. Not only is this a conservative
strategy, it also has a number of drawbacks. For one, it overlooks that transfers
are massive and that they do not just affect isolated, particular lexical items but
the whole class of prepositions. Furthermore, as transfer to another category
presupposes discrete categories, this type of reassessment cannot account for
the existence of intermediate cases. As such, it rules out abandoning the strict
assignment of a lexical item to one and only one category and allowing for
multi-categorial membership.
A more radical departure from the traditional account of prepositions,
which may contribute to a better understanding of the data, involves estab-
lishing a double classification of lexical items in word classes. The first classi-
fication is morphosyntactically based and allows, in French, for four catego-
ries: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and invariable particles, which are characterized
by the absence of morphosyntactic features. The second classification, which
applies specifically to the class of invariable particles, is syntactically based:
the members of the class of invariable particles are assigned to different syn-
tactic classes according to the pattern in which they may appear. The syntactic
patterns thus function as subcategorizing devices and, as in the case of verbs,
the same lexical items may appear in various patterns. This implies that syn-
tactic behavior is not as tightly linked to class-membership as has generally
been accepted. As in the case of the subcategorization of verbs, most combi-
nations are coded in the lexicon, but some arise only in discourse (cf. Melis
2001), providing a basis for the explanation of the intermediate cases. The
82 LUDO MELIS

observed data could thus be seen as the result of an encounter between the lexi-
cal items and the various patterns, to which an independent status may be given
as proposed by construction grammar. The fact that analogous observations
could be made for other invariable particles, such as coordinating conjunctions,
provides an independent argument in favor of this proposal; in (89), et ‘and’
does not seem to function as a coordinator but rather as a preposition:

(89) La nuit et toutes ses horreurs va descendre en notre âme.

(P. Borel, cited in Brunot 1922: 266).
‘The night and/with all its horrors will descend in our soul.’

However, some of the observed facts could not easily be handled from the
above perspective; this particularly applies to those cases which fall in between
two patterns (cf. the patterns described in sections 3.2 and 4). In order to cope
with them, a more fine-grained analysis of the head-dependent relationship
seems necessary. As a first step, Zwicky (1993) has proposed distinguishing
three different relations: (i) functor (+F)/functee (–F); (ii) formal or syntactic
head (+H)/dependent (–H); and (iii) base (+B)/non base (–B). This threefold
distinction is useful, as can be seen from witnessed by (90)–(93):

(90) +F, + H, +B:

a. Il entre dans la maison.
he enters in the house
‘He enters the house.’
b. Il va à la maison.
‘He goes to the house.’

(91) +F, + H, –B:

Il pense à Julie.
‘He thinks of Julie.’

(92) +F, –H, –B:

Il a fouillé jusqu’au moindre recoin.
he has searched as.far.as.the smallest remote.corner
‘He searched every nook and cranny.’
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 83

(93) –F, –H, –B:

Il apprend à écrire aux enfants.
He teaches to write to.the children
‘He teaches the children to write.’

However, this is only the first step: according to Zwicky (1993), the cases in
(94)–(97) are all to be considered as instances of +F, +H, –B:

(94) a. Il accède au trône.

‘He comes to the throne.’
b. Il a accolé un garage à sa maison.
‘He has added a garage on to his house.’

(95) a. Il atteint (à) l’étagère.

‘He reaches the shelf’.
b. Il touche (au/le) but.
‘He touches the goal’.

(96) a. Le tiroir y appartient, à cet ensemble.

the drawer to.it belongs, to this set.
The drawer is part of it, of this set.
b. Le tiroir lui appartient, à cette table.
the drawer to.it belongs, to this table’
‘The drawer is part of it, of the table.’

But each of these cases is clearly different, and they can be situated along a
continuum from (94), which is very similar to (90) but not identical (see sec-
tion 3.3), to (96), which contains a PP which alternates with a pronoun (see
section 3.1). This indicates that more dimensions are to be considered.
In conclusion, the observed data indicate that the syntax of the prepo-
sitions of movement cannot be captured by one single pattern and that the
complexity of the data call for a more sophisticated and flexible approach to
syntax, even in one single language and for a limited domain, such as the
expression of movement by means of the combination verb + preposition.
84 LUDO MELIS

References
Beeken, J. 1993. Spiegelstructuur en variabiliteit: Pre- en postposities in het Neder-
lands [Mirroring structure and variability: Pre- and postpositions in Dutch].
Leuven: Peeters.
Berthonneau, A.-M. 1999. “À propos de dedans et de ses relations avec dans.” Revue
de Sémantique et de Pragmatique 6: 13–42.
Borillo, A. 1995. “Quelques schémas de syntagmes à redoublement.” In Tendances
récentes en linguistique française et générale, volume dédié à David Gaatone,
H. Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot and L. Kupferman (eds), 95–109. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Brunot, F. 1922. La pensée et la langue. Paris: Masson.
Cervoni, J. 1991. La préposition. Paris: Duculot.
Crystal, D. 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 3rd edition. Oxford :
Blackwell.
Damourette, J. and Pichon, E. 1911–1940. Des mots à la pensée: Essai de grammaire
de la langue française. 7 Vols. Paris: d’Artrey.
De Boer, C. 1926. Essai sur la syntaxe moderne de la préposition en français et en
italien. Paris: Champion.
Denis, D. and Sancier-Chateau, A. 1994. Grammaire du français. Paris: le Livre de
Poche.
Grevisse, M. and Goosse, A. 1993. Le bon usage. Paris : Duculot.
Haeseryn, W., Romijn, K., Geerts, G., de Rooij J., and van den Toorn, M.C. 1997.
Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst [A General Grammar of Dutch]. Gronin-
gen: Nijhoff.
Huddleston, R. and Pullum, G.K. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ilinski, K. 2004. La préposition et son régime: Étude de cas atypiques. Paris: H.
Champion.
Jaeggli, O. 1982. Topics in Romance Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
Jones, M.A. 1996. Foundations of French Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kayne, R. 1975. French Syntax, The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press.
Lamiroy, B. 1983. Les verbes de mouvement en français et en espagnol. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Lamiroy, B. 1987. “Les verbes de mouvement, emplois figurés et extensions méta-
phoriques.” Langue française 26: 41–58.
Melis, L. 1982. “The construction of the infinitive with causative movement verbs in
French.” Communication and Cognition 15: 459–471.
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX OF ADPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT 85

Melis, L. 1996. “The dative in modern French.” In The Dative. Vol. 1, Descriptive
Studies, W. Van Belle and W. Van Langendonck (eds), 39–72. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Melis, L. 2000. “La préposition en interposition.” In Actes du XXIIe Congrès Inter-
national de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, A. Englebert, M. Pierrard,
L. Rosier, and D. Van Raemdonck (eds), VI: 353–359. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Melis, L. 2001. “La préposition est-elle toujours la tête d’un groupe prépositionnel?”
Travaux de Linguistique 42–43: 11–22.
Radford, A. 1997. Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimalist
Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riegel, M., Pellat, J.-C, and Rioul, R. 1994. Grammaire méthodique du français.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Swiggers, P. 1985. “L’article en français: Histoire d’un problème grammatical.” Revue
de Linguistique romane. 49: 379-409.
Tremblay, M. 1999. “Du statut des prépositions dans la grammaire.” Revue québé-
coise de Linguistique. 27: 167–183.
Vandeweghe, W. 2000. Grammatica van de Nederlandse zin [A grammar of the Dutch
sentence]. Leuven: Garant.
Van Riemsdijk, H. 1978. A Case Study in Syntactic Markedness: The Binding Nature
of Prepositional Phrases. Foris: Dordrecht.
Zwicky, A. 1993. “Heads, bases and functors.” In Heads in Grammatical Theory, G.
Corbett, N. Fraser, and S. McGlashan (eds.), 292–315. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,.