This study pursues two objectives, a) to describe the distribution of the extraction of prepositional attributes, and b) to propose a theory explaining it. The description of the phenomenon indicates that, though it is primarily governed by grammatical principles, it is also influenced by contextual - and hence pragmatic - factors. In the framework of Optimality Theory a successful attempt is made to capture these apparently irreconcilable factors in a unified model. The study thus contributes to a better understanding of the interaction between grammatical and pragmatic principles.