Another source of discontinuous APs is wh-movement of the PP into the sentence-initial position; cf. Section V11.3 for a detailed discussion of these movements. Consider example (51a) once more. The primeless examples in (55) show that both the place adverbial op het station and the complement op zijn vader can be topicalized into sentence-initial position. The primed examples show that the same order arises when the nominal complement of the preposition is questioned.

The examples in (56) show that PP-complements of adjectives can undergo the same processes. This shows that wh-movement is another source of discontinuous APs.

Leftward movement of PP-complements does not always have to involve movement into the sentence-initial position, but can also target clause-internal positions, i.e. more leftward positions in the middle field of the clause. This type of movement will be called short A'-movement. At least two types of short leftward movement can be distinguished, viz. negation and focus/topic movement; cf. Section V13.3.

We have seen that the PP–A order usually yields a degraded result when the AP is in the sentence-initial position; cf. (60c), (61c), and (62b'') in Subsection IIB. However, the primed examples in (74) show that some adjectives behave differently in this respect. We will see that the PP-A order in sentence-initial position is restricted to two morphologically definable classes that exhibit verbal behavior in certain respects.

Most of the adjectives that allow the PP–A order in sentence-initial position have the appearance of a past/passive participle; cf. Table 6. However, since the adjectives in Table 6A-C have no verbal counterpart, they must be considered pseudo-participles. The irregular forms in Table 6D do have a verbal counterpart, but they have a completely different meaning: the verb voldoen means “to pay” or “to be sufficient”; the verb begaan means “to commit (a blunder/murder)”.

In addition, there are a small number of adjectives derived from a verb by the suffixes -baar and -elijk; the preposition of their PP-complement is identical to that of the corresponding verbal construction. Three examples are given in (75).

Since topicalized past participles and infinitives allow their PP-complement on the left as well as on the right (cf. (76)), it may not be a coincidence that the pseudo-participles in Table 6 and the deverbal adjectives in (75) also allow both orders in topicalized position.

The following subsections will show that we have good reasons to assume that certain pseudo-participles and deverbal adjectives exhibit verbal behavior. This implies that the PP-A order with these adjectives should be accounted for in the same way as the PP-V order in (76).

If the preposition of the PP-complement of a verb is stranded by R-extraction, it always precedes the verb; cf. Koster (1978: §2.6.4.4), Corver (2006b/2017) and Ruys (2008). The stranded preposition of the PP-complement of an adjective, on the other hand, usually follows the adjective. This is illustrated in (77) and (78).

The pseudo-participles in Table 6 and the deverbal adjectives in (75), on the other hand, are more ambiguous in this respect; they allow the stranded preposition on both sides.

The degree of acceptability assigned to the cases in (79) with the stranded preposition preceding the adjective may vary from speaker to speaker, but is consistently higher than the degree of acceptability assigned to the corresponding examples in (78). The cases in (80) show that stranded prepositions in postadjectival position are sometimes even rejected.

The position of the stranded preposition is traditionally taken to indicate the unmarked (or perhaps base-generated) position of the PP-complement; the fact that stranded prepositions are to the left of the past participle in the examples in (77) is then derived from the general OV-character of Dutch; like nominal complements, PP-complements have an unmarked position immediately to the left of the verb. If this is correct, the examples in (78) show that PP-complements of adjectives should have an unmarked position immediately to the right of the adjective. The pseudo-participles in Table 6 and the deverbal adjectives in (75) should then be ambiguous on this point: the unmarked position of their PP-complement can be either to their right or to their left. The next subsection will provide more evidence for this conclusion.

The introduction to this chapter has shown that degree modifiers such as ergvery can be pied-piped by AP-topicalization and are thus part of the AP; cf. the discussion of (1). Furthermore, we have seen that focus movement of the PP-complement is likely to target a position external to the AP. It follows that focus movement places the PP-complement in front of the degree modifiers of the AP. The examples in (81) show that this is indeed the case; the PP-complement cannot intervene between the modifier and the adjective.

The previous subsections proposed that the pseudo-participles in Table 6 and the deverbal adjectives in (75) take their PP-complement to the left. Since modifiers are more peripheral to the phrase than complements, this proposal correctly predicts that the PP-complement of these adjectives can be placed between the degree adverb zeervery and the adjective, as shown in (82).

Of course, the PP-complement can also precede the modifier as a result of focus movement or neg-movement. Note that in the primed examples of (83), the negative PP cannot occupy the position between the degree modifier and the adjective, due to the well-established fact that neg-movement is obligatory; cf. the discussion in IIB2 and Section V13.3.1.

The claim that the stranded preposition is in the unmarked position of the PP-complement correctly predicts that it must be placed between the adverbial modifier erg/zeervery and the adjective. The data in (84) thus provides additional support for the claim that the pseudo-participles in Table 6 and the deverbal adjectives in (75) differ from the other adjectives in that they can select their PP-complement to their immediate left.

The fact that the stranded preposition can appear before or after pseudo-participles and deverbal adjectives suggests that such adjectives are hybrid, in the sense that they exhibit mixed adjectival and verbal behavior. The primed examples in (85) show that this mixed categorial behavior is not present when the pseudo-participle or deverbal adjective is prefixed by on- (a typical prefix of adjectives); the stranded preposition can then only occur to the right, showing that we are dealing with true adjectives.

The previous subsections have more or less accepted the traditional claim that stranded prepositions occupy the base position of the PP-complement; Koster (1978: §2.6.4.4), Corver (2006b/2017) and Ruys (2008). However, this assumption is not without its problems. We will mention one of them. Consider the examples in (86): if the stranded preposition occupies its base position and if topicalization preposes the complete AP, i.e. the adjective and its arguments, we would expect the stranded preposition to be obligatorily pied-piped by topicalization of the AP. This means that we would incorrectly predict the primeless examples in (86) to be unacceptable and the primed examples to be acceptable; the reverse is true.

The situation becomes even more puzzling when we bring in the topicalized counterparts of the examples in (84) in (87). At first glance, the acceptable examples (87a'-b') seem to have been derived by AP-topicalization from the unacceptable examples in (84a'-b'), while applying AP-topicalization to the acceptable examples in (84a-b) yields the unacceptable examples in (87a-b).

We will not discuss this intriguing problem here; we leave its solution to future research, while noting that we find similar unsolved problems with PP-complements of verbs; cf. Den Besten & Webelhuth (1990).

This section has examined the proposal that certain pseudo-participles and deverbal adjectives are hybrid categories, in the sense that they exhibit mixed adjectival and verbal behavior. The verbal behavior is particularly evident from the fact, illustrated in example (82) above, that their PP-complement can precede them within their lexical projection. That a lexical head has a hybrid categorial status in this sense is not unusual, as we can see something similar in inf-nominalizations; cf. Section N14.3.1.2, sub V. For example, the lexical head in such constructions has the typical verbal property that it can take a nominal complement to its left and assign objective case to it, as can be seen in the (a)-examples; it can also be preceded by its PP-complement if it selects one, as can be seen in the (b)-examples.

The question of how to account for this hybrid status of pseudo-participles and deverbal adjectives is still open to debate. A recent overview of different ways to account for deverbal adjectives such as afhankelijkdependent is given in Corver (2018), which further argues for an analysis in which the postadjectival PP simply functions as a complement of the adjective, as in [AP A PP], but the preadjectival PP is taken as a complement of the verbal stem of the adjective, as in [AP [VP PP V] -elijk] with syntactic head-movement of V to the adjectival head -elijk. This analysis raises several theoretical questions, as well as the question whether it can be transferred to the pseudo-participle cases; we leave this to future research, while noting that a positive answer to the latter question is not obvious a priori, because we have seen that pseudo-participles are not deverbal.