LINGUIST List 12.2706

Tue Oct 30 2001

Qs: Romance Prepositions, Eng Dialects/Adverbs

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Fernando Berm�dez, Query: romance prepositions
2. Lu Bingfu, adverbs without -ly in English dialects

Dear linguists,

I'd be interested in some cross-linguistic feedback on locative prepositions
with functional readings (I'm interested in romance data, specifically from
French, Italian, Portuguese, Castillian, Gallician, Catalan, Occitan,
Rhetoroman, Romanian), in particular on following syntactic situations:

1) choice of "erroneous" preposition (the preposition means something else,
which trigger an implicature)

Examples from English and River-Plate Spanish:

John is on the bus (lit. "on the roof of the bus")
Juan est� sentado al volante (lit. "Juan is sitting to the steering-wheel")
"Juan drives"

2) [P + bare N]

Example from English and River-Plate Spanish

John is in bed (Cf. in the bed)

Hay zapatos en vidriera (lit. "in show-window") "There is shoes on
exhibition"
Cf. Hay zapatos en la vidriera (lit. "in the show-window") "There is some
shoes there in the show-window"

3) Both (1) and (2): ["erroneous" P + bare N]

Example from Spanish

Mi padre est� bajo tierra (lit. under earth) "My father is buried"

I would really appreciate any help I might receive. I would also appreciate
if native speakers of romance languages could translate following spanish
and english "functional preposition constructions", comment on the reading,
and tell if any of the agrammatical examples are OK in any romance language.

Category 1 ("erroneous preposition")
Grammatical examples: "Est�..." al volante, a las puertas, sobre el r�o,
sobre la costa, at the office, on the train, on the bus
Agrammatical examples: "Est�..." *al libro, *al escritorio, *a la
televisi�n, *a la m�quina,

Category 2 and 3 P("erroneous" or not) + bare N
grammatical examples: en clase, en misa, en puerta, en camino, bajo tierra,
en vidriera, en cama, en coche, en televisi�n, at work, on ice, at school.
Agrammatical examples: *en ciudad, *en silla, *en mesa, *en libro, *en
escuela, *en oficina, *en iglesia, *en televisor, *a volante, *a puerta,
*sobre autob�s, *en tienda

Thanks in advance for your help,

Fernando Berm�dez
Stockholm University and M�lardalens University

Dear fellow netters,
	In Andrew Radford's Transformational Grammar (1988 Cambridge 
University Press.), on page 138, it is mentioned that "many
dialiects of English make no morphological distinction 
between Adjectives and Adverbs, and thus use Adjectives in context where 
the standard language requires -ly adverbs."
	Could anybody inform me which dialects are meant here or the
relevant publications?

	Thanks in advance!

	Bingfu Lu