Ricerc@Sapienza

Secondary, non-prototypical prepositions have the form of an adverb, adjective, verb, noun or prepositional phrase; in some cases the etymology is only partially transparent. Most prepositions govern the genitive but can also be constructed with the dative. The difference between the two cases is considered essentially stylistic, the dative being associated with oral and informal language. For some prepositions, however, both cases are equally accepted in standard language. Moreover, a group of prepositions should govern only dative, but in everyday language also genitive can be found.

Primary, prototypical prepositions in German govern accusative and dative. The difference between the two cases is semantically motivated, not only for the prepositions governing two cases (an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen), but also for prepositions allowing one option: accusative for bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne, um; dative for ab, aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu. Accusative appears to be associated with goal-orientedness and completeness, the dative represents an elsewhere condition.

The so-called secondary prepositions mostly do not look like typical prepositions, having the form of an adverb, adjective, verb, noun or prepositional phrase. Secondary prepositions generally display a synchronic alternation between genitive and dative government. A great number of prepositions require the genitive but can also be constructed with the dative, mainly in oral and informal language. On the other hand, a small group of prepositions should govern only dative, but in everyday language genitive is not unusual.

Recent years have seen increasing attention paid to experiential constructions in Ancient Greek, above all in Homeric Greek, and various studies based on different approaches have been published (see, for example, Dahl 2014, and Luraghi & Sausa 2015). One of the interesting characteristics of the experiential expressions is the variety of encoding not only cross-linguistically and diachronically, but also synchronically from an intralinguistic point of view, as typological data shows (e.g. Verhoeven 2007).