A Fine-Grained Approach to Lexical and Functional Syntactic Categories: Evidence from English prepositions and their acquisition

Most syntactic theories have come to rely on the distinction between ¿lexical¿ and ¿functional¿ categories: nouns and verbs are ¿lexical¿, while determiners and inflection are ¿functional¿. A growing body of research challenges this binary division, suggesting there are ¿semi-lexical¿ elements with both ¿lexical¿ and ¿functional¿ properties. This book develops a fine-grained approach where ¿lexical¿ and ¿functional¿ are not taken as ends of the same continuum, but are seen as two separate and distinct features, creating a two-dimensional binary distinction ([±Lexical, ±Functional]). This analysis is applied to the domain of prepositions, and resolves most of the contradictions manifest in that domain. Support is drawn from parallels in syntactic and semantic behavior, as well as evidence from a longitudinal study of five children¿s early spontaneous production. This monograph should be useful to researchers in a variety of domains, including syntax, aphasia, first- and second-language acquisition. Anyone interested in the nature of syntactic categories in general, and the nature of prepositions and prepositional-elements in particular, will find this book useful.