Deconstructing the German Verb Particle Nach at the Syntax - Semantics Interface

German particle verbs have been a source of confusion and disagreement in both syntax and semantics. This is shown by the considerable variety of approaches to particle verb constructions (see Dehé et al. 2002 for an overview). The major challenges are the argument structure of particle verbs and the role that particles play in determining them, especially in those cases where the argument structure of a particle verb differs from that of the underlying verb, such as in (1). In the following we just mention a few. A lexical approach, such as advocated, for example, by Stiebels and Wunderlich (1994) and Stiebels (1998), would require two distinct lexical entries for nach, one that does introduce a dative argument and one that does not, as well as different lexical operations to combine the base verb and the particle. Zeller (2001), who advocates a syntactic approach to particle verbs, faces the same difficulties. For the particle nach, which would be introduced by means of semantic adjunction, he would have to assume that two distinct lexical entries for nach are responsible for the difference between (1) and (2). Ramchand and Svenonius (2002), building on Ramchand’s (2002) l-syntax approach, would introduce particles and further arguments triggered by them within a result-state denoting phrase c-commanded by V. Restricting particles to telicity-introducing elements however is a problem for non-telic particles, such as German nach. Ramchand and Svenonius