Preposition-determiner amalgams in German and French at the syntax-morphology interface

The present paper examines preposition+determiner amalgams in French and German. I show that French and German P+D amalgams differ with respect to coordination: while German amalgams are transparent for coordination, French amalgams block certain coordinations. I propose that this is due to ta syntactic difference: German P+D amalgams correspond to two positions in the syntax, while French P+D amalgams occupy only one position. Adopting a model where morphology is split applying before and after the syntax, I argue that this syntactic difference of P+D amalgams corresponds to a morphological difference: German amalgams are post-syntactic contractions while French amalgams are inflected prepositions that enter the syntax as a single unit.