Inserting a preposition

We said that a role may be assigned to O syntactic relation if it is saliently affected by the activity. Recall also the discussion showing that an O NP will generally have specific reference (which explains the unacceptability of *John gave good causes all his money). Related to this, we can note that a prototypical transitive sentence will refer to a complete unit of activity, involving a specific O (e.g. She baked a cake, He broke the plate).

If the activity referred to by a transitive verb does not achieve a definite result, or does not relate to some specific object, then a preposition may be inserted between verb and O NP, to mark the deviation from an ‘ideal’ transitive event.

A semantically canonical sentence with kick is something like He kicked the ball; one assumes that he aimed his foot at the ball, it made contact, and the ball flew off. On hearing He kicked at the ball one might infer that the aim was not achieved, i.e. he missed making contact. Similarly, He kicked the door implies that he intended to deliver a kick to the door, and did so, with the required result. One also hears He kicked at the door; here—unlike in the case of He kicked at the ball—contact is likely to have been made between foot and door. Inclusion of at could imply that the purpose was not achieved—he might have tried to open the door with a kick or two, but it didn’t budge. (Suppose that eventually he did succeed. One might say, He kicked at the door for twenty minutes and eventually he did kick it down, where use of the phrasal verb kick down here signals success.) Or, He kicked at the door could be used to focus on the fact that he was angry and just kicking out in fury, with what the kicks made contact with being of secondary importance.

When bite has a non-animate object it generally refers to separating a portion of something with one’s teeth, and eating it. On hearing She bit the apple one would infer that a piece was bitten out of the fruit, and then chewed and swallowed. But someone can also bite to relieve tension, e.g. if being operated on without an anesthetic. In this instance a preposition would be inserted, e.g. She bit on the leather strap. Nothing really happens to the strap (a piece wasn’t taken out of it) and this is marked by on since it is peripheral to the main focus of the sentence—the fact that she is biting.

Hold behaves in a similar way. The canonical sense focuses on the effect the activity has on an object, e.g. John held the pig (then it couldn’t run away). If the subject clutches something so as to affect themself—e.g. John held onto the post (so that he wouldn’t be blown off his feet by the gale)—then a preposition is inserted, marking the fact that the actual identity of the object is of peripheral interest, and that it is not affected by the action.

The verb pull implies that a Causer exerts pressure on an object so that it should move. If it does move then a plain transitive construction is appropriate, e.g. John pulled the rope. If he cannot get it to move then pull may still be used but with a preposition inserted to signal this non-achievement, e.g. John pulled on the rope.

A quite different kind of example involves win. When there is a specific object NP the plain transitive verb will be used, e.g. Vladimir won that game of chess last night. But if the object is generic and non-specific the preposition at must be inserted, e.g. Vladimir usually wins at chess.

In fact only a handful of transitive verbs may insert a preposition before an object to mark that it lacks some of the salient properties associated with the syntactic relation ‘object’. They include a number of AFFECT items such as hit, strike, hammer, cut, saw, punch, kick, scrape, rub, tear (all taking at), a few MOTION and REST verbs such as pull (on) and hold (onto), a number of CORPOREAL verbs such as bite, chew, nibble, suck (taking on or at), smell, sniff (taking at) (but not eat or drink), perhaps just win (at) from COMPETITION, and some from the TELL subtype of SPEAKING.

Many of these verbs may not (except in some marked context) be used intransitively—we cannot say just *He hit or *She cut. Some object must be specified, but the fact that it is not an ‘ideal’ object in this instance of the activity can be shown by the insertion of a preposition.

Hunt is particularly interesting. There is a semantic link between hunt and hunt for—both being associated with killing game—but the plain transitive is most similar to AFFECT verbs, whereas hunt for is more like look for and search for from the ATTENTION type. The sentence He is hunting lions suggests that there may be a known group of lions that the hunter is attempting to kill. But He is hunting for lions implies only that he is directing his attention towards finding lions (which he would then kill). The NP lions refers to something that may not be attainable, and it is naturally introduced by for (cf. the for in wish for).

In summary, a preposition can be inserted before the object NP of a transitive verb to indicate that the emphasis is not on the effect of the activity on some specific object (the normal situation) but rather on the subject’s engaging in the activity.