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<Paper uid="W06-2104">
  <Title>Marked Adpositions</Title>
  <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="23" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 The notions of Figure and Ground refer to the located
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> object and the object of reference, respectively (cf. Talmy 2001).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1">  describe the relation between a Figure and a Ground by means of vectors. The simple directional meaning puts restrictions on either the direction (in case of a straight line (3b)) or the length (in case of a circle (3c)) of the vectors. Complex directional meaning imposes no restrictions whatsoever (3d). That the distinction between (3c) and (3d) is linguistically relevant can be seen in the following Ancient Greek example. In (4a), dia combined with the genitive case indicates a simple, straight line, whereas the combination with accusative case in (4b) refers to a complex directional meaning, in which the Ground is almost completely covered by the path:  'turning around through the glens' [Ilias 17.283, taken from Luraghi 2003: 171] I argue that this difference in spatial complexity corresponds to a difference in semantic markedness, (4a) being less marked than (4b). An adposition can be non-concrete, or non-spatial. Solstad (2002) discusses the opposition spatial - non-spatial. Comparing spatial and causal meaning of the German preposition durch, he shows that in an unmarked syntactic position, that is, attached at the VP or IP level, the spatial meaning of a durch PP wins. In a marked position, that is, attached as CP adjunct, the causal meaning wins. Following the syntactic complexity criterion, the spatial meaning is unmarked, and the causal reading is marked.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> It is by definition impossible to locate an abstract notion in space. As adpositions prefer a spatial meaning, an abstract PP object is more marked than a concrete one. This markedness is reflected in the complexity of the form: Prepositions that typically take abstract objects are often morphologically more complex.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Examples are the following Dutch prepositions, and their English equivalents: vanwege 'because of', betreffende 'concerning', met betrekking tot 'with regard to', and aangaande 'concerning'. Concluding this section, we can say that a PP preferably has a simple, concrete, spatial meaning.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="23" end_page="24" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Finnish Adpositions: Markedness
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    <Paragraph position="0"> of Form As we want to pair meaning with form, let us look at the markedness of the form of Finnish adpositional phrases. In Finnish in general, there are more postpositions than prepositions.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Postpositions combine more often with genitive case than with partitive (54 vs. 10, respectively). The prepositions have a small preference for partitive case (9 vs. 6). Also for spatial adpositions, genitive case is assigned most, as can be seen in (5) and (6):  (5) Spatial adpositions assigning genitive case: al 'under', ede-/ete- 'front' jalke-/jalje'after' luo- 'to', 'by', paa- 'on', sisa 'in', ta(ka)'back', viere- 'beside'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> (6) Spatial adpositions assigning partitive case:  koh- 'towards', pitkin 'along', 'all over', pain 'against', vast- 'against', 'in the opposite direction'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Assuming that the most frequent form is unmarked (cf. the frequency criterion), we can conclude that genitive case is the unmarked form for the complement of the PP in Finnish.3 Before analyzing the Finnish data in Section 5, I will first introduce Bidirectional OT, the framework I am using.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> 3 Another motivation for genitive being the standard case, though not pursued here, is the origin of adpositions. Postpositions deriving from nouns, like paa &lt; 'head', usually take genitive case.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="24" end_page="24" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Bidirectional OT
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Optimality Theory is a model of the system of the linguistic knowledge a speaker of a language has (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993). The rules in this grammar are violable constraints, which can be in conflict with each other. Weak constraints can be violated in order to satisfy stronger ones. Each language has its own specific hierarchy of constraints. In the Generator possible output candidates (forms in case of production, and meanings in case of perception) are formed, that are evaluated in the Evaluator.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The candidate that has the least serious violations of the constraints is the winner.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Bidirectional OT gives a general procedure of optimization of the relation of form and meaning, simultaneously optimizing in both directions, from meaning to form, and from form to meaning. Hence, BiOT evaluates form-meaning pairs (Blutner et al. to appear: 90-91). In bidirectional OT a form-meaning pair is called super-optimal if there is no other super-optimal form-meaning pair with a different (i.e. less marked) form that expresses the same meaning better, and there is no other super-optimal form-meaning pair with a different meaning that is a better interpretation of that same form. This yields two super-optimal form-meaning pairs, namely the unmarked form with the unmarked meaning, and the marked form with the marked meaning. The widely attested Markedness principle of Horn (1984) which states that marked forms in languages go with marked meanings (and unmarked forms with unmarked meanings) is thus accounted for by bidirectional OT.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> In section 2 we saw which properties of a PP are marked. An unmarked PP preferably expresses a simple, concrete, spatial meaning. Put into markedness constraints, we get: *COMPLEXITY: avoid semantic complexity BC (BE CONCRETE): have a concrete meaning In my analysis, simple directional meaning violates *Complexity once, whereas complex directional meaning yields a double violation. In section 3, genitive case was shown to be the most frequent, hence unmarked form. We can put this finding in a markedness constraint on the form of the PP: GEN: use genitive case on the object of an adposition.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="8" start_page="24" end_page="24" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5 Analysis of the Data
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    <Paragraph position="0"> Now let us have a look at the Finnish data. The general distribution of spatial adpositions was given in (5) and (6) above. This general distribution seems to follow the opposition locative-directional: as 'towards', 'along', 'against' are directional and the others (roughly) locational.4 As illustrated in Tableau 1, directional meanings violate *Complexity, and partitive forms violate  Since the form-meaning pair &lt;gen, loc&gt; is the only candidate that satisfies all constraints it is the first super-optimal pair. In a second round of optimization the pairs &lt;gen, dir&gt; and &lt;part, loc&gt; fall out, because there is another form-meaning pair, namely &lt;gen, loc&gt;, with either a less marked meaning that is expressed by the same form, or with a less marked form that expresses the same meaning. This yields the second super-optimal form-meaning pair, namely &lt;part, dir&gt; which combines the marked form with the marked meaning.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The unmarked locational meaning corresponds to the unmarked genitive form, and the marked directional one to the marked partitive. Thus, the general distribution of Finnish adpositions is accounted for.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> But, as mentioned before, besides these two groups, Finnish has a third set of adpositions combining with both cases:</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="9" start_page="24" end_page="26" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 The following test can be used to discriminate locatives
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> from directional adpositions: the former can be combined with the verb to be, the latter with verbs of motion, such as to go.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> 5 For further explanation on the use of tableaux, I refer to Blutner et al. (to appear)  (7) Adpositions taking both genitive and partitive case: ympari- 'around', keske-'middle', lahe'near', yli(-) 'over'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  The meaning of such adpositions in combination with genitive case is different from that of a combination with partitive case. In what follows, I will give an account of the form-meaning pairs involving these adpositions. First, let us look at the alternation of ympari 'around' shown in examples (1) and (2), repeated below for convenience.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3">  (1) juoks-i-mme ympari kaupunki-a run-PAST-1PL around city-PART 'We were running around in the city' (2) juoks-i-mme kaupungi-n ympari run-PAST-1PL city-GEN around  'We ran around the city' In (1) around indicates a complex, random path comparable to the Greek example (4b), schematized in (3d). In (2) however, around describes a circle with the city as its centre (cf. (3c)). The constraint on complexity is playing a role in this alternation, as is illustrated in Tableau  As expected, the genitive case has the unmarked simple meaning, whereas the partitive case combines with the complex one. Simple directional meaning violates *Complexity once, as it is one step more complex than locational meaning; complex directional meaning yields a double violation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The alternation of keskella 'in the middle' can be explained along the same lines. Again, genitive case combines with the unmarked meaning in (9), whereas the partitive is assigned the marked notion 'all over' in (8):  'The toys are in the middle of the floor' (lit. at the centre) The third adposition to deal with is lahella 'near'. For the previous adpositions we saw that the case alternation was only used for an extended meaning. Rather unexpectedly, for lahella partitive case is also possible within the simple spatial domain, as shown in (10).6</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> 'The car is near the house' As soon as the concreteness constraint BC becomes of importance, however, partitive case is used, as is clear from (11): (11) ole-mme lahella ratkaisu-a be.PRES-1PL near solution-PART 'We are close to a solution' In this example, the constraint BC comes into play. The abstract meaning combines with partitive case, whereas the concrete one can have both cases. This is shown in the following tableau, in which the unpredicted pair is indicated with a question mark:  Finally, let us turn to yli 'over'. The preposition over has extensively been studied for English (cf. Lakoff 1987; Brugman 1988; Dewell 1994). The more central meanings are the locative 'be in the space above something' and 'be on the other side of something', and the directional 'starting from one side of something, go to the other side via the covering space' and 'starting from one side of something, go to the other side via its (top) surface'. The reading 'to exceed something' that 'over' also has, is further removed from the central meaning. In Finnish we see that the more central notions are covered by the genitive case, as is shown in (12) and (13):  Only within the extended 'Excess' meaning, the partitive case can occur, as can be seen in (14):  It is still possible to use genitive case here, but the 2500 Euro is pragmatically different for both constructions. With partitive case, it is an arbitrary amount, whereas it is precisely the amount I intended to spend on the car with the genitive. Here, the prominence of the amount makes it more concrete.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="10" start_page="26" end_page="27" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
6 About Word Order
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> As noted above, there is a correlation between the syntactic position and case in the Finnish adpositional system. How do we know that it is not the syntactic position that determines the markedness, instead of case (cf. (1) and (2))? First, the correlation should not be taken as a strict rule, as both postpositional and prepositional lahella can govern partitive case:  'S/he arrived before me' A more complex example is given in (18) and (19). Sometimes, the non-standard combination of partitive with a postposition yields a metaphorical reading, whereas the standard combination with a preposition yields a concrete  reading. Apparently, there is an additional constraint on the form which does not say &amp;quot;use postpositions rather than prepositions&amp;quot;, but &amp;quot;use postpositions for genitive case and prepositions for partitive&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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