in Romance and Germanic*

This paper explores the idea that the properties of adpositional systems can suffice to explain the Talmian distinction between satellite and verb framed languages. Following the insight that mor-phological simple prepositions in Romance languages are only locative, I propose that the func-tional domain of the directional/path preposition is defective and, hence, has to be licensed via incorporation to the (motion) verb. Prepositional incorporation, understood as head movement, pre-vents manner incorporation, as a particular case of Kayne’s (1994) condition on adjunction. The paper offers an account for Talmian lexicalization patterns from a non lexicalist perspective, reducing typological differences between languages to specific properties within the functional domain of lexical heads