Abstract This paper investigates German sentence adverbs that have a clausal origin. In particular, we propose a scenario in which they are reanalyzed from V1- or V2-parentheticals, rather than from subordinating matrix constructions. This reanalysis is facilitated by systematic structural ambiguity between integrated and non-integrated material in the German middle field. We argue that the change can be better explained by principles of syntactic economy that lead to structural simplification, rather than semanto-pragmatic mechanisms such as subjectification. While we assume that this path is highly relevant also cross-linguistically, German offers a particularly well-suited environment for its study because it exhibits asymmetries for main clauses vs. subordinate clauses, V1 parentheticals vs. main clauses, and a disambiguating position for integrated vs. non-integrated material in the C-domain, the German prefield.
Abstract This paper argues that adverbs in English do not constitute a separate lexical class, neither are they positional variants of a single category together with adjectives, but rather they can and should be assimilated to PPs. In particular, the paper provides evidence from the complement-taking capacities of adverbs that the morpheme -ly is not a suffix but a nominal root, which forms the basis of the analysis of adverbs as PPs. Furthermore, it shows that the PP analysis of adverbs is also able to account for the facts that have been previously used as arguments for alternative analyses.
Abstract In German linguistics, words like langsam in der Hund läuft langsam (‘the dog walks slowly’) are traditionally classified as ‘adverbially used adjectives’. We argue instead that they should be classified as adverbs, regularly converted from adjectives. We show that classical arguments for labeling them adjectives are spurious, because they need to resort to decontextualization which is not a legitimate strategy for defining part-of-speech. An argument for treating them as adverbs is that their semantic contribution is comparable to that of regular adverbs and not to that of prototypical adjectives, in that they do not predicate over an entity variable, but over another predicate or an event variable. Such semantic differences usually justify classification in different parts-of-speech. Some relic unambiguous adverb forms still survive; they show distributional constraints that can be explained by their inability to predicate over entities.
Abstract Modal particles typically grammaticalize from adverbs in German and Dutch, and some modal particles have not lost all of their adverb properties yet. Presenting an exploratory and mainly qualitative analysis, this paper addresses two particular features of adverbs that can still be found with a number of modal particles, viz. intensification by means of degree particles in German and Dutch and the existence of diminutive variants in Dutch. These features turn out to occur only with a restricted set of particles, that is largely the same for both features and in both languages and that only contains particles stemming from adverbs that show these features and for which intensification or diminution is conceivable from a semantic-pragmatic point of view.
Abstract This paper is concerned with the syntactic and semantic properties of underspecified adjuncts, i.e. adjuncts without an inherent interpretation. Based on a corpus of non-finite participial clauses in German and English, it is shown that underspecified adjuncts occur with many different adverbial interpretations, modifying all the syntactico-semantic domains of a clause identified in the adjunction-based literature on adverbials, as well as a variety of control readings. The corpus data reveal interesting correlations between the interpretation, distribution and control status of these adjuncts that show how syntax and semantics work compositionally to determine an adjunct’s meaning.
Abstract This paper investigates the grammaticalization ( Roberts & Roussou 1999 , Lehmann 2015 ) of the adverbial constructions of the X-mente pattern from Latin to Brazilian Portuguese, under the framework of Distributed Morphology ( Halle & Marantz 1993 , Marantz 1997 ). In Latin, these adverbials consisted of the feminine noun mens ‘mind’ and an adjective, and expressed the meaning of ‘in an X manner’ (with ‘X’ representing the adjective). In Brazilian Portuguese, they are formally adverbs, single words composed of a feminine adjective followed by the ending -mente . We propose that the noun mente changed into an adverbial categorizer head ( adv ) while preserving some properties from its lexical origin, notably the feminine gender, which is shared with the adjective to which it merges.
Abstract Several types of adverbial clauses can occur external to a German independent clause. The article argues that between such externally occurring adverbial clauses (ExtAdvCls) a basic distinction has to be made between those ExtAdvCls that refer to the world and contribute to the propositional meaning (W-ExtAdvCls) and those that refer to the discourse situation (D-ExtAdvCls). W-ExtAdvCls and D-ExtAdvCls differ in terms of distribution, scope, ability to accommodate root phenomena and illocutionary force. To account for these differences, it is argued that W-ExtAdvCls are handled by regular sentence grammar and D-ExtAdvCls by a discourse grammar module that adopts a central aspect of Thetical Grammar, a part of Discourse Grammar ( Heine et al. 2013 ). Thetical grammar provides for a cognitive-communicative operation whereby pieces of clausal syntax are transferred to the grammar of discourse.
Abstract In addition to arguments, adverbs and non-arguments are considered potential candidates to occupy left peripheral positions. Following standard assumptions in syntactic locality, adverbs, non-arguments and arguments elicit distinct effects in terms of intervention locality if moved. Such an asymmetry is not expected if these elements are generated in the syntactic position they are spelt-out. In this study, we employ quantitative and computational methods to compare cartographic models differing in the merge nature and explore, as a diagnostic, the intervention effects (or the lack of intervention effects) predicted by these models. Specifically, we compare the observed counts in large-scale datasets to imputed expected frequencies on the basis of the models under investigation. To reach this goal, we extract grammatical clauses from morpho-syntactically annotated treebanks of Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian and Swedish. Our findings reveal cross-linguistic levels of complexity and typological variability, consistent with the predictions of featural Relativized Minimality.
Abstract While the German expression jetzt ‘now’ is usually a temporal adverb it also has a use as a discourse particle. In its temporal use, jetzt is a temporal indexical that gets its denotation from the utterance context. It does, however, not just refer to the utterance point at which the utterance is made (present reading), but can also refer to a larger time interval that starts in the past and ends at the utterance time point (past reading) or refer to one that starts at the utterance time point and extends into the future (future reading). Crucially, the discourse particle has three corresponding readings that center around a discourse question. This jetzt can relate an utterance back to a previous question (past reading), mark the start of a new question (future reading), or it may also mark a question as still being current (present reading). The discourse use of jetzt thus inherits the three orientations of the temporal use of jetzt and applies them to a higher notion of context: instead of situating the utterance in the time of the physical world, it situates the utterance with respect to other utterances in the linguistic interaction. We provide a formal semantics for temporal and discourse jetzt that can provide all three readings and also highlight the similarities between the two uses.
Abstract This paper presents a preliminary discussion of adverb placement and V-raising in heritage Greek, by examining two groups of Greek heritage speakers in the US and in Germany. It is shown that heritage speakers generally preserve the V-raising pattern of Greek. Nevertheless, they seem to prefer orders that are compatible with both their languages, as has been observed in previous studies on other V-raising languages.
This book offers the first systematic investigation of the instrumental role across syntax, semantics, and language acquisition. Focusing primarily on Italian within a comparative perspective, the book addresses a long-standing puzzle: why Instruments can be syntactically omitted even when they remain semantically present. Combining theoretical analysis with experimental evidence, corpus data, and innovative methodologies, the study redefines the status of Instruments with respect to the argument-adjunct distinction and introduces a new, principled account of their syntactic omission based on semantic recoverability. It proposes a refined typology of Instruments, grounded in verb meaning and contextual factors, and tests its predictions through behavioral experiments and large-scale corpus analyses. The book also breaks new ground in acquisition research, presenting the first experimental investigation of how Italian-speaking children acquire Instruments. The results reveal a striking dissociation between early syntactic mastery and the slower development of Instrument semantic recoverability, shedding new light on the acquisition of syntactically optional elements. By integrating syntax, semantics, and acquisition, Silent Instruments provides a robust and empirically grounded framework that is readily applicable to cross-linguistic research and to other phenomena at the syntax-semantics interface. It will be of interest to linguists working on argument structure, optionality, language acquisition, and experimental and corpus-based approaches to grammar.
Abstract This paper investigates sentence adverbs, modal particles, and evidential-epistemic affixes in Basque. While previous studies have often grouped Basque verbal affixes expressing evidentiality and epistemicity under the label of modal particles, this work argues that such elements differ significantly from German modal particles in their morphosyntactic behavior and should instead be classified as evidential-epistemic affixes. The study also offers a first descriptive and syntactic analysis of Basque sentence adverbs, an understudied category. A preliminary classification is proposed, distinguishing between adverbs that function exclusively as sentence adverbs and those that also serve other grammatical roles. Additionally, the paper explores the origins of these adverbs, shedding light on their grammaticalization paths. Finally, it identifies a small set of elements in Basque that align more closely with German modal particles in terms of syntactic behaviour and interpretation.
Abstract The criterion often used to define and identify “linguistic categories” (also known as Jackendoff’s criterion) — whereby membership in a given category can be defined by means of the ban on the joint occurrence of elements from one and the same class in the same sentence — has been extensively explored in Theoretical Syntax and Typology. If it is true that members of the same class/category cannot co-occur, and if Movement is an instance of the same Merge operation, then the assumption of the “decompositionality principle” would allow one to extend Jackendoff’s criterion to identify the features involved in syntactic derivation as the structure is built up. We provide three sets of examples in which adverbs can be used to diagnose the features involved in three particular structures in Brazilian Portuguese.
Abstract The German adverb wieder ‘again’ has a restitutive and a repetitive meaning with different base positions reflecting their semantic relations to the rest of the sentence. In its restitutive reading, it is a process adverb which is a V-adjunct, whereas in its repetitive reading it is an event adverb which is adjoined in a higher position. The diachronic development of wieder from a restitutive to a repetitive adverb results from a reanalysis made possible by an ambiguous surface structure in the German middle field and semantic ambiguities. These also provide the critical context for the further development of wieder into a modal particle with a remind-me meaning. The modal particle is the result of grammaticalization processes which applies to some other temporal adverbs that can occur in combinations with wieder.
Abstract This article presents a case study on Dutch adverbs formed with the suffix -erwijs . It addresses two research questions that have been raised in the literature. Firstly, it asks the question whether other Germanic adverbial suffixes are equivalents of this suffix. It is shown that -erwijs can realise a large subset of the Cinquean adverbial projections. It is pointed out that the question whether other affixes are equivalents of the - erwijs suffix is therefore unprecise and misguided: adverbial suffixes may realize sets of adverbial syntactic projections, subsets of which may also be realized by other adverbial affixes. Secondly, it investigates whether there is a structural relation between adverbs formed with the suffix -erwijs and present participles. We show that the adverbs built on participles fail to project verbal argument structure. This leads to an interesting puzzle, where the adverbs morphologically appear to contain the participle, but do not contain a verb semantically. We propose to solve this puzzle by putting verbal argument structure projecting heads higher in the structure than the participial suffix, which we take to be a mere adjectiviser.
Abstract This paper investigates the use of chains of clause-initial temporal adjuncts as signals of continuative and contrastive discourse relations in written English discourse. Drawing on 88 examples from the magazine section of the British National Corpus , the study shows that the linguistic realization of continuative and contrastive discourse relations varies considerably with regard to (i) the semantics of the temporal adjuncts, (ii) the presence of additional discourse connectives and (iii) the degree of continuity of the intra-clausal coherence strands (i.e. referential (dis)continuity, topic (dis)continuity, temporal/aspectual coherence and lexical coherence). In light of these findings, the present paper argues for conceptualizing continuative and contrastive discourse relations in terms of a continuum with varying degrees of (dis)continuity, depending on their linguistic realization.
This paper examines two types of rightward adjunct displacement as manifested in Korean and English. The paper proposes that the postverbal adjunct in Korean is derived by sideward movement of NP and concatenation of the adjunct, yielding a multi-rooted structure. It is argued that the differences in right-displacement between the two languages stem from the type of Merge applied to the adjunct. In Korean, the postverbal adjunct is concatenated but not syntactically integrated, while in English, the extraposed adjunct is fully integrated via late-merge. Evidence for the proposal is drawn from locality restrictions, root effects, embeddability, and scope/binding variations associated with right-displaced adjuncts. The paper provides novel evidence for the existence of non-conventional Merge in language, supporting the view that rightward displacement is not a uniform phenomenon.
In this article, a fine-grained cartographic analysis of Mandarin A-not-A questions is proposed to account for their interactions with various functional elements along the clausal spine: Inner A-not-A questions are sensitive to certain locality effects in Minimalist terms, whereas outer A-not-A questions are immune to the interference. It is proposed that the former combines two operations: The first step involves head movement to the head of PolP in overt syntax, which can be blocked by an intervening functional head. The second step involves LF feature movement to the Int head, which can be blocked by an intervening quantifier. By contrast, the latter resides in the left periphery, hence no modals or quantifiers are high enough to trigger blocking effects.
This study investigates the distribution of dou (‘all’) in Mandarin quantifier restrictors, an area largely overlooked. While dou is well-studied in nuclear scopes, its occurrence in restrictors follows distinct patterns: quantifiers that permit dou in nuclear scopes often reject it in restrictors. Symmetric quantifiers (e.g., ‘(at least) ten,’ ‘more than ten’) allow dou in restrictors, whereas non-symmetric ones (e.g., mei ‘every,’ dabufen ‘most’) do not. This paper argues that dou appears in restrictors only when the quantifier allows Q(A)(B) and Q(B)(A) to be interchanged truth-conditionally. Empirical tests on henduo (‘many’), henshao (‘few’), and proportional quantifiers support this symmetry-based analysis, emphasizing intersection (∩) as a licensing condition for dou in restrictors.
