Adjectieven met voorzetselvoorwerp: een taalvergelijkende studie
Adjectives with a Prepositional Object: A Linguistic Comparative Study

Summary/Abstract: Most spatial prepositions contribute to sentential dynamics in an “OBJ-PETAL” (“Goal”) or “OBJ-FUGAL” (“Source”) way. These neologisms are formed by analogy to the existing opposition centripetaal – centrifugaal. These dynamics are also attested when these prepositions are in a fixed construal with the verb, with the PP as a prepositional object. When they are in construal with an adjective, especially one of emotion, one is confronted with a double orientation. That is, the object selected by the predicate appears to be the Target or Goal of the direction implied by the predicate, but at the same time one can see in it the Source for the emotion described in the predicate: the PP seems to combine a ‘-petal’ with a ‘-fugal’ reading. This orientational paradox leads to different lexical choices in different languages such as Dutch and French. This phenomenon is explored in this article by extending the contrastive scope to data from Czech and Polish.

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