Mistaking For: Testing the Theory of Mediated Predication

This article investigates the validity of the theory of mediated predication by examining one of the proposed overt realizations of Pred⁰. Taking the law of parsimony as our starting position and using evidence from English, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian, we argue that the element that looks like the preposition ‘for’ is, in fact, a preposition (not Pred⁰), and we show how it explains the syntax and the semantics of the relevant ‘for’ sequences. Cases of apparently predicative interpretation of ‘for’-PP result from the interplay between the meaning of the preposition ‘for’ and the metaphorical reinterpretation of motion and locative verbs that ‘for’-PPs combine with.