Complex Prepositions Isabelle Roy and Peter Svenonius CASTL, University of Tromsø Abstract Complex spatial prepositions of the type in front of in English and ` a cˆ ot´ e de in French can be decomposed into three pieces: PLACE,AXPART and K, an analysis supported on the one hand by their morphosyntax, on the other by their compositional semantics, and which accounts for complex prepositional expressions in a wide variety of languages, even those not genetically connected. Beyond the domain of space ex- pressions, this paper aims at investigating how the tripartite analysis can be extended to two other areas where complex Ps are commonly found: temporal Ps and causal Ps. Les pr´ epositions spatiales complexes du type in front of en anglais et ` a cˆ ot´ e de en franc¸ais peuvent ˆ etre d´ ecompos´ ees en trois parties: PLACE,AXPART et K, une analyse motiv´ ee ` a la fois par leur forme morphosyntactique et par leur s´ emantique composi- tionnelle, et qui permet de rendre compte des expressions pr´ epositionnelles complexes dans une vari´ et´ e de langues souvent non reli´ ees g´ en´ etiquement. Au-del` a du domaine de l’espace, nous nous int´ eressons dans cet article ` a examiner comment l’analyse tri- partite peut ˆ etre ´ etendue ` a deux autres domaines o` u les pr´ epositions complexes sont fr´ equemment utilis´ ees: le temps et la causalit´ e. 1 Decomposition of P Many languages have complex prepositional expressions to express spatial notions, for example ` a l’int´ erieur de, ` a cˆ ot´ e de, en bas de and in English in front of, on top of, and so on. These can often be decomposed, morphosyntactically, into three parts: [i] a case-head such as French de or English of, which we will refer to as K (for Case), [ii] a region based on an axial part-whole decomposition, which we call AXPART, and [iii] a PLACE. These can be arranged in a tree structure as in (1). (1) Place ` a AxPart cˆ ot´ e K de DP la maison Place in AxPart back K of DP the house 1