Adverbs And Functional Heads

One of the world's leading syntacticians presents evidence for locating Adverb Phrases in the specifiers of distinct functional projections within a novel and well articulated theory of the clause. In this theory, both adverbs and heads, which encode the functional notions of the clause, are ordered in a rigid sequence. Cinques cutting-edge proposal suggests that the structure of natural language sentences is much richer than previously assumed.

This volume collects the recent published articles of Guglielmo Cinque of the University of Venice, one of the world's top linguists. The book is divided into two sections, the first on restructuring, a central topic in Romance syntax and with connections to other language groups as well. The second part focuses on the consequences of treating clausal functional heads as members of a universal hierarchy in the domain of morphpsyntax, offering a new perspective on many intricate problems arising in a variety of natural languages.

This monograph investigates a number of central issues in the Syntax of Adverbs with special reference to Greek in the light of Kayne's (1994) Antisymmetry Hypothesis. It examines the conditions on the placement of the various adverb types, their licensing requirements, and their relation to adjectives. The author advances an analysis according to which adverbs are licensed as Specifiers of functional projections in the clausal domain. As such, they enter a matching relation with the relevant features of the respective functional head. Adverbs are either directly merged at the relevant functional projection (for instance Aspectual and Speaker Oriented adverbs) or alternatively they are moved to this position from the complement domain of the verb (for instance manner adverbs). Furthermore, the volume examines the phenomenon of Adverb Incorporation. It is proposed that Incorporation is obligatory for those VP internal Adverbs which are 'structuraly non-complex' in Chomsky's 1995 terms. Finally, the similarities and differences between adverbs and adjectives, clausal and nominal structure are investigated and a number of asymmetries between the two are highlighted.

Adverbials have become an important testing ground for research on the interfaces between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The articles selected for this volume present recent research on this topic. Among the issues addressed are the occurrence of adverbials in various domains of the sentence Mittelfeld, left and right periphery, adverbials in front of gaps, and the influence of the discourse context on the interpretation and position of adverbials. Particular classes of adverbials that are discussed include domain, locative, temporal, manner, transparent, and degree adverbials. Beyond the exploration of these topics, the volume reflects the current debate between proponents of semantic-driven approaches to the positioning of adverbials which assume adverbials to be adjuncts and approaches that claim a primacy of syntax in conceiving of adverbials as specifiers in a universally valid hierarchy of functional projections.

This monograph investigates a number of central issues in the Syntax of Adverbs with special reference to Greek in the light of Kayne's (1994) Antisymmetry Hypothesis. It examines the conditions on the placement of the various adverb types, their licensing requirements, and their relation to adjectives. The author advances an analysis according to which adverbs are licensed as Specifiers of functional projections in the clausal domain. As such, they enter a matching relation with the relevant features of the respective functional head. Adverbs are either directly merged at the relevant functional projection (for instance Aspectual and Speaker Oriented adverbs) or alternatively they are moved to this position from the complement domain of the verb (for instance manner adverbs). Furthermore, the volume examines the phenomenon of Adverb Incorporation. It is proposed that Incorporation is obligatory for those VP internal Adverbs which are 'structuraly non-complex' in Chomsky's 1995 terms. Finally, the similarities and differences between adverbs and adjectives, clausal and nominal structure are investigated and a number of asymmetries between the two are highlighted.

Adverbs as a word class are notoriously difficult to define. The volume deals with the delimitation of this category, its internal structure, the morphological make-up of adverbs and their positions in syntactic structures. A closer look at diachronic developments sheds light on the characteristics of adverbial word-formation. Taking into account adverbs in German, English, Dutch, French and Italian, the contributions to this volume provide new insights into the characteristics of this heterogeneous and multi-faceted category and will be of interest to linguists working in the fields of morphology, syntax and language change.

This monograph provides an in-depth investigation of the structural integration and the licensing of adverbs in relation to clause structure, with special emphasis on the structural implementation of the relation between the position and interpretation of adverbs. The book substantiates the hypothesis that the licensing of adverbs within and across the three layers of the clause is contingent on specifier-head agreement and that variation in the linear order of adverbs and other elements of the clause follows from the interplay of a small number of factors. The central claims made are: functional projections hosting adverbs are not confined to the inflectional and complementizer layer of the clause, but also play a central role in the shaping of the lexical layer; postverbal adverbs are realized within a semantically empty verbal projection and licensed under specifier head agreement by proxy; and adverbs that occur within the complementizer layer of the clause do so by either move or merge.

This book proposes a theory of the distribution of adverbial adjuncts in a Principles and Parameters framework, claiming that there are few syntactic principles specific to adverbials; rather, for the most part, adverbials adjoin freely to any projection. Adjuncts' possible hierarchical positions are determined by whether they can receive a proper interpretation, according to their selectional (including scope) requirements and general compositional rules, while linear order is determined by hierarchical position along with a system of directionality principles and morphological weight, both of which apply generally to adjuncts and all other syntactic elements. A wide range of adverbial types is analysed; predicational adverbs (such as manner, and modal adverbs), domain expressions like financially, temporal, frequency, duration and focusing adverbials; participant PPs (e.g. locatives and benefactives); resultative and conditional clauses, and others, taken primarily from English, Chinese, French and Italian, with occasional reference to others (such as German and Japanese).