A Phase-based Account of the Syntactic Derivation of English Locative Inversion Constructions

In the English locative inversion construction, both the preverbal PP and postverbal NP have mixed functional properties.Under a phase-based account proposed in this paper, it is argued that all verbs allowing locative inversion are unaccusative in nature; the NP and PP appear as dependents of the unaccusative verb.The functional light verb vP projection of the unaccusative verb is not a phase because it is intransitive by virtue of having no thematic external argument.When the NP is frozen in the VP-area focus position as presentational focus, the PP undergoes the shortest movement first to Spec-vP, then to Spec-TP, and finally to Spec-TopP, giving rise to the subject and topic properties of the PP.Since PPs do not have φ-features, T agrees in person and number with and assigns nominative case to the posterval NP.