This article argues that a
that-clause is categorially a legitimate object of a preposition, and that it is prevented from following a preposition by a set of morphological constraints: e.g.,
on that; by that. This is based on the descriptive generalization that the sequence“preposition
that”in construction is prohibited. I tentatively extend this type of generalization to cover the cases involving
for to- and
to-clauses. The proposal is empirically superior to the analyses of Kaplan and Bresnan (1982), Sag
et al. (1985), Stowell (1981) and Horn (1975).
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