Adverb placement – convergence of structure and licensing (original) (raw)

The syntax and semantics of locating adverbials

Cette étude examine les propriétés des adverbiaux de localisation du français à plusieurs niveaux. La structure syntaxique de ces éléments est décrite de même que les interactions complexes entre position dans la phrase et contribution sémantique. En se focalisant sur la position d'adjoint du syntagme verbal, on montre que le contenu sémantique des marqueurs considérés est mieux saisi par une approche 'relationnelle' que par une approche 'référentielle'. Une sémantique compositionnelle des adverbiaux en position de VP-adjoints est finalement proposée.

Syntactic base positions for adjuncts? Psycholinguistic studies on frame and sentence adverbials

Questions and Answers in Linguistics, 2013

Syntactic approaches to the positioning of adjuncts (e.g., Frey and Pittner (1998), Maienborn (2001), Frey (2003), Pittner (2004), Steube (2006)) postulate base positions for frame as well as for sentence adverbials above the entire proposition. The question arises how these two adverbial types are positioned in relation to each other. Syntactic accounts respond differently to this question. Furthermore, the role of semantic and pragmatic factors for the positioning of adverbials is disputable. The current paper presents the results of two psycholinguistic experiments that provide evidence for a base position account of frame and sentence adverbials. Furthermore, a non-syntactic factor - namely the referentiality of frame adverbials - is shown to influence position preferences.

Adverbials in German: More on embedding and focus

Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2012

Adverbials are well-known to form a rather heterogeneous class in multiple respects. Here we examine their ability to bear focus and their ability to be embedded in subordinate sentences. For focusability, the distinction between informational focus and contrastive focus proves to play a role. We discern six main classes of adverbials, identified by their base position. As expected, not all classes (or subclasses) can bear (informational or contrastive) focus, and also not all (sub)classes can be embedded. Among those that can, it is still only a proper subset that may simultaneously be embedded and focused. A general finding is that the lower in the syntactic tree an adverbial is base-generated, the more likely it allows for focusing as well as for embedding. The distinction between proposition-internal and proposition-external adverbs is shown to be helpful in determining which adverbials may bear (informational) focus. Also certain extrinsic factors like the type of the embedding...

Adverb position and information structure in processing English

Many languages permit considerable flexibility of word order. However, when a phrase appears in a non-canonical position, typically there are information-structure constraints on its discourse status. For example, in Finnish, canonical order is SVO. When listeners encounter an OV sentence-beginning, they immediately predict that the (post-verbal) subject will refer to some discourse-new entity (Kaiser and Trueswell, 2004). In a language like German, a phrase may be scrambled to a position earlier than its canonical position. But typically the scrambled phrase must be already given in discourse and the clause will receive narrow focus (the focus will not include the scrambled constituent, see Bader and Meng, 1999 for experimental evidence). In a language with scrambling, identifying the structural position of arguments may be difficult. However, when the sentence contains an adverb, the adverb may in effect identify a structural position allowing the position of the argument to be de...

A multifactorial approach to adverb placement: assumptions, facts, and problems

Lingua, 2004

This paper discusses several data concerning the distribution of adverbs, primarily focusing on data from European Portuguese. It is defended that a proper understanding of the behavior of adverbs must take into account several factors that do not necessarily converge. In particular, it is argued that the following variables must be taken into account: inherent vs non-inherent meaning of the adverb, categorical status, domains of modification, and weight of each adverb. Adverbs are treated as adjuncts, and the constraints on adjunction sites are derived from the variables discussed

On the syntactic status of sentential adverbs and modal particles (2010)

This paper sets out a number of reasons for establishing a distinction between sentential (modal) adverbs and modal particles. Adverbs and particles are generally difficult to define as two distinct and independent word classes in terms of unitary criteria and distinctive properties. The traditional role of an adverb is that of modifying a verb or a verb phrase. In reality, adverbs also modify adjectives, sentences, and other adverbs. Particles also serve a sort of 'modification' function. Modal particles, for example, take the whole sentence as their object and fit its content to the context of speech. This 'vague' similarity, though, should not be interpreted as a motivation for assimilating the two categories, especially when other syntactic properties, such as the sentential position, the distribution, and the sensitivity to sentence types, together with their correlated semantic interpretations, are taken into consideration.

"Adverbial subordination: Introductory overview"

Ph. Baldi & P. Cuzzolin (eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax, 4: Complex Sentences, Gramaticalization, Typology, Berlin, De Gruyter Mouton: 11-18., 2011

This overview concerns itself with the different semantic relations that can be introduced by Adverbial Subordinators (ASs) in the Latin language. The fact that the different adverbial clausal relations are dealt with in different chapters in this work makes it useful to offer a brief introduction that reports on some general issues which affect the entire topic area, both conceptually as well as organizationally.

Problems of adverbial placement in learner English and the British National Corpus.

A tricky problem for French learners of English is to know where to put adjuncts in re-lation to the verb, as can be seen in these examples 1 taken from undergraduate essays: NNS11 Another strategy would be to change ?completely the distribution network. NNS19 The Pronunciation Unit has ?as well an important diplomatic role. NNS23 That’s why the advertisers thought about putting ?in the centre a picture of a top model. The primary aim of this paper is to explore the constraints on adjuncts which lead us to interpret these examples as awkward or ungrammatical. A second aim of this pa- per is to explore whether adjuncts occur in free combination in sentences or occur as chunks, parts of longer lexical patterns, on the basis of their behaviour in a corpus of texts, i.e. the British National Corpus. In this paper I use ‘adjunct’ to refer to lexical and grammatical adverbs (such as completely, also) as well as prepositional phrases and other expressions which function as adverbials (e.g. as well, in the centre). The syntactic features of adjunct placement are well documented in the comprehen-sive grammars of English (Jacobson 1964, Quirk et al. 1985. Huddleston and Pullum 2002). Apart from the large number of studies in generative grammar, adjuncts are generally discussed in terms of their placement in the sentence according to such cri- teria as prosodic detachment and thematic structure (Moignet 1961, Nøjgaard 1968, Dulbecco 1999, Van Belle 2000, Carlson et al. 2001). Specific adverbs, such as the specifier only have also been widely studied, because they present problems of semantic scope (Ballert 1977, Risanen 1980, Viitanen 1992, Cairncross 1997, Clement 1998, Frosch 1997, Van Belle 2000). More recently, there have been a handful of studies on adjuncts from a phraseological point of view, for example van der Wouden (1997), who examines collocations of negative polarity, and Lysvåg (1999), who looks at the phraseology of famously, as in the expression to get on famously. As far as I know, there has been no comparative analysis of adjunct positions in English and French from a phraseological perspective, and there has been little or no analysis of adjuncts in terms of contrastive error analysis (Sylviane Granger, personal communication).