This paper provides novel empirical arguments for the position that category-neutral roots are capable of selecting a complement. Prepositional verb and particle verb constructions are well-known for their syntactic differences in (non)compositional semantics, flexibility in adverb insertion, and detachability of the preposition/particle and DP sequence from the verb root (Radford 1988, O’dowd 1998, Cowan 2008, a.o.). I argue that these classic contrasts are best explained in the modern framework of verb phrases by the distinct syntactic loci of the preposition and particle elements. In particular, I show that while the PP argument of prepositional verbs is selected by the categorizing head (Merchant 2016), the particle phrase is introduced by the acategorial root. Thus, the results of this paper converge to the conclusion that roots are capable of selection at least in some cases, albeit lacking categorial information. Some welcome corollaries of the current analysis are the optionality of particles to incorporate to verbal roots and the interactions of the two constructions with OF-ing and ACC-ing nominalizations.
1. Introduction
2. An On-going Debate: Arguments of Roots
3. Prepositional Verbs and Particle Verbs
4. Proposal
5. Empirical Consequences
6. Conclusions and Future Directions
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