FOUR WAYS OF ADDITION – THE MEANING OF THE WITH-PHRASE
Keywords:
with-phrase, secondary predication, participant role, companion, instrument, locatum, depictiveAbstract
The paper discusses the interpretation of the with-phrase and its cross-linguistic counterparts, in languages in which, within the domain of an eventuality, it expresses four different meanings: comitative, instrument, locatum and depictive. An analysis
is proposed in which the narrow semantic interpretation of the with-phrase is that of a secondary predicate specifying an additive relation along a certain dimension (or set of dimensions) between the argument targeted by it and the referent of the
complement of the preposition with. In some languages, there are slight differences in the marking of these interpretations, i.e. between secondary predicates bound by simple eventualities only, and those without such a restriction. Apart from this
parameter, it is argued that the particular properties that distinguish these four types of interpretation are a matter of pragmatics. Such is the question whether set of dimensions along which the addition takes place includes the dimension of the
participant role, as well as whether the two arguments of addition stand in a (nearly) symmetric, or in a strongly asymmetric relation along the dimension of addition. I showed how a number of patterns in the behaviour of with-phrases are accounted
for, explained and even predicted by the proposed analysis.
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