English particles, Russian prefixes, and prepositional phrases

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to identify the position for particles in English and prefixes in Russian in the context of the nature of the prepositional phrase.

In order to solve this problem I examine the nature of verb-particle constructions and prefixed verbs in English and Russian respectively. I show that particles and prefixes have much in common. Russian prefixes as well as English particles build up together with the verb either compositional or idiomatic meanings. Russian prefixes as well as English particles license the presence of objects and prepositional phrases. I present the previous analyses for verb-particle constructions (the ‘small clause structure’ approach and the ‘complex head structure’ approach) and highlight the problems associated with these as outlined by Ramchand and Svenonius (2002). In order to examine verb-particle constructions in English I adopt the analysis proposed by Ramchand and Svenonius which I later use for Russian prefixed verbs.

Outlining the similarities between particles and prefixes I argue that particles and prefixes occupy the same position in the syntactic structure. Before studying the position of particles and prefixes in the context of the prepositional structure, I present the approaches to the prepositions and prepositional phrases offered in the literature and illustrate the nature of the prepositions cross-linguistically. I introduce PathP and PlaceP within a prepositional phrase (following Svenonius 2003), which according to the analysis, influence the assignment of case in Russian. In trying to define the position of particles and prefixes in the context of prepositional phrases in English and Russian respectively, I came to the conclusion that these elements require additional projections, which I refer to as DirP.

The analysis introduced in this thesis shows that both English particles and Russian prefixes exhibit the same syntactic features and occupy the same position in the syntactic structure.