1 REMARKS ON THE PARTICLE VERB DOMAINS Satoshi Oku

Particle verbs have challenged linguistic analysis because of their unique and sometimes contradictory characteristics. A verb particle combination behaves like a complex V 0 in some respects. For instance, on the one hand, the semantics of look up (the information) is not compositionally transparent and thus must be stored in the lexicon. Some morphosyntactic properties also indicate that a particle verb combination is a morphological object (not a syntactically composed unit). 1 To deal with their word-like properties, various types of complex predicate analysis of particle verbs have been proposed (e.g. Chomsky (1957), Johnson (1991)). On the other hand, however, particles are syntactically independent of the base verb. For instance, they can be separated from the base verb as in look NP up, which is a property not observed with genuine complex V 0 s. This leads to the proposal (since Emonds (1972)) that particles are not part of a complex V 0 but rather are intransitive prepositions that project their own maximal projection. 2 In his recently published book, Zeller proposes a specific structural relation, " structural adjacency, " between the particle and the verb, to explain the intriguing nature of particle verbs, which are different either from complex V 0 s or from ordinary complements (specifically, full prepositional phrases). In this article, I will argue that some of Zeller's 2 arguments do not necessarily strongly support his postulation of the new structural notion in the theory. I will then suggest that the same fact can possibly be captured without appealing to the new special notion of " structural adjacency. " This is actually the same line of claim which Zeller himself explores in his subsequent work (Zeller 2002). The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 summarizes Zeller's arguments that particles are not part of a complex V 0 , nor are they syntactically incorporated into the base verb. Rather, they remain in-situ in syntax as syntactically independent elements. In Section 3, I will review three types of Zeller's arguments for a special local relation between a particle and the base verb, and then I will argue that his claims based on the non-referential property and the special semantic behavior of particles does not necessarily give strong evidence for the special local relation. Section 4 suggests a possible alternative to define the relevant local domain. Section 5 is the summary. 2. Arguments for a Syntactic In-Situ …