Table Of ContentOptimizing Adverb Positions
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Volume 181
Optimizing Adverb Positions
by Eva Engels
Optimizing Adverb Positions
Eva Engels
Aarhus University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Engels, Eva.
Optimizing adverb positions / Eva Engels.
p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166-0829 ; v. 181)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Adverb. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--
Word order. I. Title.
P284.E54 2012
415’.76--dc23 2011041932
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Table of contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
part i. Adverb positions
chapter 1
Basic assumptions on inputs and output candidates 3
1.1 A semantic restriction on adverb positions 3
1.2 Restricting the input 7
1.2.1 Restrictions on input semantic representations 7
1.2.2 A note on subject-oriented adverbs 13
1.2.3 T ype lowering 16
1.2.4 Excursus: SPECIFIED EVENTs and manner readings 19
1.2.5 Other co-occurrence restrictions 21
1.3 Restricting the candidates 23
1.4 Conclusion 31
chapter 2
Verb movement and adverb placement 33
2.1 Ordering of adverbs and verbs/auxiliaries in English and French 33
2.1.1 Adverb positions and finite verb movement 34
2.1.2 Adverbs as adjuncts 41
2.1.3 Clause-final adverbs and adjunction to the right 44
2.1.4 Adverbs in pre-auxiliary position 49
2.1.5 Adverb positions in negated clauses 58
2.1.6 Adverbs with narrow scope relative to a finite auxiliary 66
2.1.7 Adverbs and non-finite verbs/auxiliaries 69
2.1.8 S ummary 72
2.2 Main clause/embedded clause asymmetry in verb positions
in German 73
2.2.1 V2 in German main clauses 74
2.2.2 V-final in German embedded clauses 82
2.2.3 C lause-initial position 86
2.2.4 S ummary 98
2.3 Conclusion 99
i Optimizing Adverb Positions
chapter 3
Information structure and adverb placement 101
3.1 Adverb placement and focus-background structure 101
3.1.1 Focus-sensitivity of sentence adverbs 102
3.1.2 Focus-sensitive adverbs in the German middle field 106
3.1.3 Focus-sensitive adverbs and the German prefield position 118
3.1.4 Focus-sensitive adverbs in English and French 130
3.1.5 Excursus: Positions of sentence adverbs in Italian 138
3.1.6 Summary 141
3.2 Adverb placement and topic-comment structure 142
3.2.1 Topics in clause-initial position in English and French 143
3.2.2 Topics in clause-medial position in German 147
3.2.3 A left-peripheral topic position in IP 153
3.2.4 Adverbs in pre-subject position 164
3.2.5 Pre-subject phrases: Merge versus Move 171
3.2.6 A scopal restriction on pre-subject adverbs 177
3.2.7 A structural restriction on pre-subject phrases 188
3.2.8 Excursus: Pre-subject phrases in the Scandinavian
V2-languages 213
3.2.9 Summary 216
3.3 Conclusion 217
chapter 4
Interim conclusion 219
part ii. Adverb positions in gap constructions
chapter 5
Gap constructions in English 225
5.1 Data 225
5.2 Previous approaches to adverb placement in gap constructions 234
5.2.1 Baker (1971, 1981) 234
5.2.2 Sag (1978, 1980b), Sag & Fodor (1994),
Kim & Sag (1995, 2002) 237
5.2.3 Empty Category Principle Approaches 238
5.2.4 Summary 239
5.3 The gaps 240
5.4 Wide scope adverb positions in non-inverted gap constructions 244
5.5 Excursus: There-gap constructions 251
5.6 Narrow scope adverb positions in gap constructions 255
5.7 Adverb positions in inverted gap constructions 261
5.8 Conclusion 265
Table of contents ii
chapter 6
Other languages 269
6.1 French 270
6.1.1 D ata 270
6.1.2 Adverb positions in Clitic Left Dislocations with simple tense 279
6.1.3 Adverb positions in clefts with simple tense 282
6.1.4 Adverb positions in gap constructions with complex tense 298
6.1.5 Excursus: The distribution of sentence adverbs in Italian 305
6.1.6 Summary 307
6.2 German 308
6.2.1 Data 308
6.2.2 Syntax: V2 312
6.2.3 Information structure: Focus-background and topic-comment
structure 314
6.2.4 Semantics: Scope 317
6.2.5 Summary 321
6.3 Conclusion 322
chapter 7
Conclusion 325
References 333
Index 345
Acknowledgements
This book is based on research I carried out at the University of Potsdam in
2000–2005. I would like to thank Gisbert Fanselow and Artemis Alexiadou for
their beneficial support in that period. Furthermore, I am most grateful to Sten
Vikner, Johanna Wood and Peter Sells for helpful discussions of and valuable
comments on an earlier version of this book and to Werner Abraham for inviting
me to submit the manuscript to the Linguistik Aktuell Series. For their help and
patience, I would like to thank my native speaker informants Tonio Green, Bryan
Jurish and Kirsten Brock (English), Caroline Féry, Elisabeth Rose, Jean Ragot and
Caroline Koser (French) as well as Pierluigi Grasso and Daniele Nati (Italian).
This work has received support as part of the project “Similarities and
Differences between Clauses and Nominals” financed by Forskningsrådet for Kultur
og Kommunikation (Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication).
