Directional expressions cross-linguistically: Nanosyntax and lexicalization Directional expressions cross-linguistically: Nanosyntax and lexicalization

In this paper, I investigate the syntactic structure underlying expressions of the three main types of Paths: Goal Path, Source Path and Route Path. I suggest that they are structurally different and propose a fine-grained syntactic structure for each of them, which is able to account for their morphological make-up. I explore how this structure is spelled out in various languages and show that a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization captures the facts in an elegant way. In discussing the spell-out of the structure by prepositions and case affixes, I reach the conclusion that sometimes the verb has to ‘reach down’ and lexicalize heads which belong to the spatial domain (cf. Svenonius and Son 2008). I provide evidence from languages where I argue that this is the case.