Abstract
This study discusses the semantic and argument-structural behaviour of Germanic preverbs (understood as a cover term for verb particles and prefixes). It is based on detailed research on most German and English particles, and prefixes such as re-, out-, over- and pre-. My goal is to cover the most important phenomena which form the basis for a theory of the argument-structural effects of Germanic preverbs, concentrating on little-known data where possible. Among others, we discuss the following phenomena. (1) illustrates the phenomenon of unselected objects, i.e. objects of complex verbs which do not correspond to the selection restrictions of the simplex verb. The ability of preverbs to license unselected objects is well known, but the interaction between preverbs and objects has various other, less well known manifestations. (2) gives examples where particles allow linking of either the theme or the reference object of the prepositional relation expressed by the particle, even if one or both of the possible objects is not selected by the verb. (3) shows some cases where an obligatorilly transitive verb becomes optionally transitive in the presence of a particle. (4) gives examples where preverbs disallow the objects selected by the verb.
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McIntyre, A. (2003). Preverbs, argument linking and verb semantics: Germanic prefixes and particles. In: Booij, G., Van Marle, J. (eds) Yearbook of Morphology 2003. Yearbook of Morphology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-1513-7_6
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