052177134X cambridge university press the syntax of adjuncts jan 2002

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THE SYNTAX OF ADJUNCTS
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, whereas 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 analyzed:
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).
Thomas Ernst, who has lectured widely in East Asia, Western Europe, and the
United States, is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts–
Amherst. His many published articles have appeared in, among other journals,
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory and Linguistic Inquiry.



CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS
General editors: S. R. ANDERSON, J. BRESNAN, B. COMRIE,
W. DRESSLER, C. EWEN, R. HUDDLESTON, R. LASS,
D. LIGHTFOOT, J. LYONS, P. H. MATTHEWS, R. POSNER,
S. ROMAINE, N. V. SMITH, N. VINCENT

The Syntax of Adjuncts

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS
In this series
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KNUD LAMBRECHT: Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus,
and the mental representations of discourse referents
LUIGI BURZIO: Principles of English stress
JOHN A. HAWKINS: A performance theory of order and constituency
ALICE C. HARRIS and LYLE CAMPBELL: Historical syntax in cross-linguistic
perspective

LILIANE HAEGEMAN: The syntax of negation
PAUL GORRELL: Syntax and parsing
GUGLIELMO CINQUE: Italian syntax and Universal Grammar
HENRY SMITH: Restrictiveness in case theory
D. ROBERT LADD: Intonational phonology
ANDREA MORO: The raising of predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the
theory of clause structure
ROGER LASS: Historical linguistics and language change
JOHN M. ANDERSON: A notional theory of syntactic categories
BERND HEINE: Possession: Cognitive sources, forces and
grammaticalization
NOMI ERTESCHIK-SHIR: The dynamics of focus structure
JOHN COLEMAN: Phonological representations: Their names, forms and
powers
CHRISTINA Y. BETHIN: Slavic prosody: Language change and phonological
theory
BARBARA DANCYGIER: Conditionals and prediction: Time, knowledge, and
causation in English
CLAIRE LEFEBVRE: Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar: The case
of Haitian Creole
HEINZ GIEGERICH: Lexical strata in English: Morphological causes,
phonological effects
KEREN RICE: Morpheme order and semantic scope: Word formation in the
Athapaskan verb

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APRIL McMAHON:

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96

MATTHEW Y. CHEN:

Lexical phonology and the history of English

Tone sandhi: Patterns across Chinese dialects
Inflectional morphology
JOAN BYBEE: Phonology and language use
LAURIE BAUER: Morphological productivity
THOMAS ERNST: The syntax of adjuncts
GREGORY T. STUMP:

Supplementary volumes
LILIANE HAEGEMAN: Theory and description in generative syntax: A case study in
West Flemish
A. E. BACKHOUSE: The lexical field of taste: A semantic study of Japanese taste
terms
NICKOLAUS RITT: Quantity adjustment: Vowel lengthening and shortening in early
Middle English

Earlier issues not listed are also available.


The Syntax of Adjuncts

THOMAS ERNST

Visiting Scholar, University of Massachusetts–Amherst


         
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

© Thomas Ernst 2004
First published in printed format 2001
ISBN 0-511-03426-1 eBook (Adobe Reader)
ISBN 0-521-77134-X hardback


Contents

Acknowledgments

page xi

1

Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Overview of Data and Approaches
1.3 Main Theses

1.4 Aspects of Syntactic and Semantic Theory
1.5 Organization

1
1
8
17
21
38

2

The Semantics of Predicational Adverbs
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Preliminaries: Selection and the FEO Calculus
2.3 Subject-Oriented Adverbs
2.4 Speaker-Oriented Predicationals
2.5 Exocomparative Adverbs
2.6 Predicational Adverbs, Selection, and Homonymy
2.7 Summary, Conclusion, and Final Remarks

41
41
47
54
69
79
81
90

3

The Scopal Basis of Adverb Licensing
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Scope-Based Licensing and the Distribution
of Predicational Adverbs
3.3 Outline of the Feature-Based Theory
3.4 Multiple Positions for One Predicational Adverb
3.5 Multiple Positions for One Functional Adjunct
3.6 Ordering Restrictions among Predicational Adverbs
3.7 Permutability of Different Adjunct Classes
3.8 Differences in Iterability between Adjunct Subclasses
3.9 Licensing of Coordinate Adjuncts

92
92
96
110
114
119
127
130
134
135

vii


viii

Contents

3.10
3.11

Generalizations across Scope Phenomena
Summary and Conclusion

137
143

4

Arguments for Right-Adjunction
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Preliminary Evidence for the PDH: Concentric Phenomena
4.3 A PDH Theory, with Right-Adjunction
4.4 LCH: The “Larsonian” Version
4.5 LCH: The Intraposition Version
4.6 Summary and Conclusions

149
149
154
159
178
191
203

5

Noncanonical Orders and the Structure of VP
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Structure of Complements and V-Raising
5.3 Arguments against Left-Adjunction in VP
5.4 A Theory of Rightward Movement
5.5 Review of Predictions for Adverbial Positions in PredP
5.6 The Kaynean-LCH Account of Postverbal Adjuncts
5.7 Summary and Conclusion

206
206
209
213
226
234
236
253

6

Event-Internal Adjuncts
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Survey of Event-Internal Adjuncts in VP
6.3 Purely Adverbial Event-Internal Adjuncts
6.4 Participant PPs
6.5 The Ceiling of the Low Range
6.6 Summary and Conclusions for Event-Internal Modification

255

255
258
266
289
298
306

7

Adjunct Licensing in the AuxRange
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Preliminaries
7.3 The Syntax of Predicational Adverbs: Review
7.4 Functional Adverbs
7.5 Support for the Scope-Based Theory
7.6 Adjunct-Verb Order and Variation in the AuxRange
7.7 Conclusion

309
309
310
322
325
357
374
384

8

Adjuncts in Clause-Initial Projections

8.1 Introduction
8.2 Adjunction to T
8.3 Clause-Initial Adjuncts
8.4 Topicalization, Wide Scope, and Crossing Movements
8.5 FocP, Wh-CompP (ForceP), and Kinds of Adjacency

386
386
388
407
418
425


Contents

8.6

Adjuncts and Alternative Subject Positions
in Germanic Languages
Summary and Conclusion

433
436

Conclusions and Prospects
9.1 Overview
9.2 The Principles of Adverbial Adjunct Distribution
9.3 The Distribution of Adjuncts
9.4 Conclusions

9.5 Further Issues
9.6 Conclusion and a Look Forward

439
439
440
443
451
456
464

8.7

9

ix

Notes

467

References

513

Name Index

533

Languages Index

538

Subject Index

540



Acknowledgments

This is the book I would have written as my dissertation in 1983, had my
and the field’s state of knowledge permitted it. Alas, we were both far from
it. In writing it 17 years later, I had help not only from the excellent work in
syntactic and semantic theory published in the interim but also from many
valued colleagues and friends.
First, I must thank Sally McConnell-Ginet, whose 1982 article did more
than anything else to start me on my research path, and who also has been an
unfailing source of suggestions and encouragement from that time onward.
In a similar way, I am very grateful to Jim Huang and to Norbert Hornstein
for both ideas and steadfast support over many years. More specific to this
book, Leslie Gabriele, Manfred Krifka, Barbara Partee, Carlota Smith, and
Henri¨ette de Swart provided insights and suggestions on semantic issues at
crucial moments, although they might not have been aware of their great
impact at the time.
In the last few years a community of people interested in adjuncts has come
together, and I must thank my friends and colleagues in this group for many
stimulating discussions at conferences and via e-mail. We all owe a debt to
Guglielmo Cinque for his recent work on adverbs, which has proven such a
stimulus to the syntactic side of things. I have particularly benefited from the

ideas and company of Carol Tenny, Werner Frey, Hubert Haider, Henri¨ette de
Swart, Claudia Maienborn, Peter Svenonius, Barbara Partee, Karin Pittner,
Ben Shaer, and Adam Wyner, and from cogent written comments by Arnim
von Stechow, Carlota Smith, and Peter Culicover. (I ought also to thank
Norway – the cities of Tromsø and Oslo, at least – for providing fine venues
for many of these discussions!)
Much of this work was presented in talks over the last several years, at the
University of Durham, Rutgers University, Cornell University, Indiana University, the University of Maryland, SUNY–Stony Brook, and at ZAS-Berlin,
xi


xii

Acknowledgments

and I thank the audiences there for their comments, as well as the students
in my seminar on adjunct syntax at Indiana University in 1997. In addition, a number of others have provided helpful comments or suggestions,
including Artemis Alexiadou, Ralph Blight, Dan Finer, Grant Goodall, Jane
Grimshaw, Ken Hale, Norbert Hornstein, Shizhe Huang, Richard Larson,
Audrey Li, Asya Pereltsvaig, Johan Rooryck, Ken Safir, Maggie Tallerman,
and Lisa Travis. Karen Baertsch helped with cheerful and competent clerical
assistance, Christine Bartels provided suggestions and encouragement at an
early stage, and Kay Steinmetz made many improvements with her thorough
editing.
So many people provided me with native speaker judgments in various
languages that it would be impossible to list them all, but there are a few
who put in considerable time and effort, often (undoubtedly) when they were
also hopelessly busy with their own work. For this I would especially like to
thank Lorraine Appelbaum, Tori Barone, Ken DeJong, Doris Fretz, and Carol
Tenny for English; Shizhe Huang, Audrey Li, and Chi-chuan (Grace) Yang

for Mandarin Chinese; Linh Ho-Duc and Julie Auger for French; Paolo Villa
for Italian; and Yukiko Morimoto and Masa Deguchi for Japanese.
Shizhe Huang and Audrey Li deserve special thanks for many years of
stimulating conversations, moral support, and friendship (even if Shizhe and
Zhu Hong still beat me at ping-pong). I also owe special debts to Maureen
Martella, Lorraine Appelbaum, and Tasha Hunter for keeping me sane in
the last three years, and to the linguistics faculties at Rutgers University and
Indiana University for restoring my faith in academic collegiality.
Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, Esther Ernst and Robert Ernst
(1915–1999). Truly, theirs are the broadest of the shoulders of giants on which
I have been standing.


1
Introduction

1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 The Main Goal
Nobody seems to know exactly what to do with adverbs. The literature of the
last 30 years in formal syntax and semantics is peppered with analyses of the
distribution or interpretation (or both) of small classes of adverbs but has few
attempts at an overall theory; there have been popular proposals for other phenomena based crucially on assumptions about adverbial syntax that have little
or no foundation; and almost everyone who has looked at the overall landscape
has felt obliged to observe what a swamp it is. The situation for the larger class
of adverbials, including PPs, CPs, and other adverb-like phrases, is yet more
complex and difficult. This book is intended as a response – an attempt to formulate a comprehensive theory of the distribution of adverbial adjuncts, one
based on a wide range of data from the majority of semantic types of adverbials, culled from a large and diverse range of languages, and focused on accounting for the major distributional facts by means of a relatively small number of general principles, most of which are already necessary to account for
other areas of syntax. Within this framework there are several specific goals.
1.1.2 Specific Goals
1.1.2.1 Base Positions and Licensing

When formal grammars standardly included Phrase Structure rules of the
sort elaborated by Chomsky (1965) and other scholars of the 1960s, the free
distribution of adverbs like stupidly or quickly, shown in (1.1)–(1.2), created
an obvious problem: one needed rules like those shown in (1.3) to express
their distribution.
1


2

Introduction

(1.1) (Stupidly,) they (stupidly) have (stupidly) been (stupidly) buying hog
futures (, stupidly).
(1.2) Albert (quickly) pushed the hammer (quickly) up (quickly) onto the
roof (quickly).
(1.3) a. S → (AdvP) NP (AdvP) Aux (AdvP) VP (AdvP)
b. VP → (AdvP) V NP (AdvP) Prt (AdvP) PP (AdvP)
As was recognized quickly, this is a rather ungainly and redundant way to
express the simple generalization that, for the most part, English adverbs occur
freely under the appropriate (S or VP) node for the subclass in question. For
this reason Keyser (1968) argued for, and later works assumed, a unique base
position for a given adverb (say, VP-initial position) plus some sort of free
movement for these “transportable” adverbs.
Stowell 1981 and subsequent work, however, showed that grammars are
more restrictive and less redundant if phrase structure facts are parceled out
to existing mechanisms in other modules, such as Case theory, Theta theory,
and principles of Spec-head agreement. On this view, the generation of items
in D-Structure and subsequent movements are free in principle, but phrases
must meet licensing conditions of various sorts.1 Typically, complements are

licensed when selected by some head, moved items are licensed by features of
their landing sites, an element base-generated in Spec position must have features matching those of its head (or is there as part of a general mapping from
the Theta Hierarchy to Specs of “shell” VPs), and so on. However, there has
been little consensus on how adjuncts are licensed. And they must be licensed;
many proposals in the literature make assertions that an adverbial phrase X has
a particular base position, but this is only the second half of the story: in a formal grammar, there must be specific principles to account for those positions.
It is important to remember that base positions are not fixed by phrase structure theory per se. The base position of a direct object in early GovernmentBinding (GB), for example, was determined by Theta and Case theories,
which together ruled out any NP bearing an internal theta role of V but not
governed by (and adjacent to) V. Similarly, a subject’s base position, if VPinternal subjects were adopted, was fixed by the requirements that theta roles
be assigned under government, that arguments of V not be adjoined (and thus
they were in Spec, however this was ultimately stated), and that the subject’s
theta role be assigned to an NP c-commanding the object (assuming the Theta
Hierarchy). That there was a unique base position was the consequence of
narrowly formulated principles of these modules; they were so formulated
because there was good evidence, such as from the locality of selection and
Case assignment, that there was a unique base position.


1.1 Introduction

3

This observation is important, because there has sometimes seemed to be
an uncritical assumption that adjuncts must have unique base positions. Since
many adjuncts seem to have multiple surface positions, the null assumption
in current theory ought to be that they also have correspondingly multiple
base positions; this is what is predicted by the free choice of items from the
lexicon in the course of building up a tree. Note in particular that none of
the reasons for positing unique base positions for arguments apply in general
to adjuncts, such as the need to preserve locality of selection and locality of

Case assignment, or to preserve the simplest set of PS rules.
This is not to say that one might not have other reasons for unique base
positions; it is only to say that they must be different reasons and that they must
be articulated, since they go against the null assumption. One possible reason
is given by Cinque (1999): if adverbs are licensed in a one-to-one relation
with a functional head, we restrict the possible types of licensing relations
for them in Universal Grammar (UG). If this view of a unique base position
for a given adverb is adopted, there must either be subsequent movements
(of the adverb or other elements) to account for surface positions or the
appearance of multiple positions for one adverb must be the result of different,
“homophonous” adverbs. I argue at length that the need for such movements,
as well as loss of restrictiveness in other modules, favors an approach where
adjuncts may have multiple base positions. Regardless of the outcome, an
adequate theory of adverbial distribution must do what PS rules were designed
to do but did far too parochially and redundantly: to predict correctly the
possible positions for any adverbial (with a given interpretation) in any given
sentence. A primary goal of this book is to provide such a theory.
1.1.2.2 The Nature of Interfaces
A second important specific goal of this work is to flesh out a hypothesis
about the interfaces between syntax and semantics on the one hand, and syntax and phonology on the other. Although the proposals made in the following
chapters (previewed in section 1.1.3) posit certain syntactic mechanisms for
adjunct licensing, the more important principles are constraints on mapping
Logical Form (LF) onto semantic representations and constraints on Phonetic
Form (PF). Most centrally, there are two main claims, one for each interface.
First, the hierarchical arrangement of adverbials is primarily determined by
the interaction of compositional rules and lexicosemantic requirements of
individual adjuncts, as semantic representations are built up according to
syntactic structure. Relatively little pure syntax is involved, such as licensing
features specific to adverbs, feature-driven or “meaning-driven” movements

4

Introduction

at LF, or systematic and widespread movement of heads around adverbs to
account for alternate orders. Second, the linear order of adjuncts and related
elements (such as modals, aspectual auxiliaries, passive markers, etc.) follows
from their hierarchical positions, plus (a) Directionality Principles, including a language’s parameterization for basic direction of complements and
(b) Weight theory, which requires, rules out, or (dis)favors certain linear orders according to the “weight” of constituents in a sentence. Both of these are
verified primarily at PF.
This is not a claim that no syntax is involved.2 The Directionality Principles,
while their effect is realized at PF, are a version of the traditional view that
languages are either head-initial or head-final, plus the assumption that Spec
positions are universally leftward, or at least heavily so. Another important device is a set of features that collectively define extended projections, in the oftused sense first articulated by Grimshaw (1991) (and echoed in the “phases” of
Chomsky [1999]). Finally, certain movements and principles of feature checking play a role in determining the ultimate linear order of adjuncts. It is crucial
that none of these are specific to adjuncts; they all help determine the positions
of arguments and verbs as well. Thus these proposals together embody the
claims that, in general, relatively little syntax is specific to adverbial syntax
and that in particular cases the semantic and PF-side principles, not the purely
syntactic ones, have the greatest voice in determining adverbial distribution.
1.1.2.3 Generality and Restrictiveness
A third specific goal of this book is to reduce the degree of stipulation in current theories of adjunct syntax, making the overall theory more general, modular, and restrictive. Stipulative proposals abound, perhaps understandably,
because there has been little in the way of an overall theory to use as a guide.
As examples, consider proposals by Ernst (1985) and Cinque (1999:29–
30, following ideas in Nilsen [1998]). The first of these, in trying to account
for the wider distribution of domain adverbs with respect to manner adverbs
(see (1.4)) does no more than restate the facts in a formal way: it posits rules
that license manner adverbs only within VP but that allow base positions for
domain adverbs anywhere in S (= IP).

(1.4) a. (Psychologically,) this result (psychologically) may (psychologically) signal a change (psychologically).
b. (*Loudly,) this result (*loudly) may (loudly) signal a change (loudly).
The second proposal suggests, albeit tentatively, that DP/PP modifiers like
every day or at the university enter into a different syntactic structure than do


1.1 Introduction

5

AdvPs; this structure allows alternative orderings for the first type, as (1.5a)
shows, but not for the second, in (1.5b).
(1.5) a. They attended classes {at the university every day/every day at the
university}.
b. They had {obviously quietly/*quietly obviously} attended classes.
Presumably, given a different sort of semantic interpretation for the two types
of adjuncts, the structural difference can be made to follow from the semantic
one, perhaps by requiring the adverbials in (1.5a) to be specifiers of iterated,
unordered light ␯ heads, while those in (1.5b) are licensed by semantically
more specific heads like “Epistemic0 ” or “Manner0 .”
These analyses are stipulative in that neither follows from more general
principles; they are also redundant in that independently necessary semantic
differences can be made to account for the variations. In the case of domain
adverbs, the narrower distribution of manner adverbs in (1.4b) follows from
a general restriction of event-internal modification to the lower part of the
clause, a restriction that also affects measure adverbs, restitutive again, and
such PPs as instrumentals, benefactives, and locatives like at the university
(on one reading). These modifiers combine semantically with their sister
constituent, which (simplifying somewhat) is a VP representing an event. By
contrast, domain adverbs do not modify via sisterhood; they need only bind a

variable corresponding (roughly) to the position of the main predicate. Thus
they are licensed as long as they c-command this predicate, and in general
they may occur anywhere in the sentence. (Chapter 6 fleshes out these ideas
in detail.) The difference in (1.5a–b) is rooted in the fact that adverbs like
obviously and quietly have certain scope requirements that are violated if
they do not occur in the order shown; while the DP/PP phrases in (1.5a)
do not have the same type of lexical requirements, either order produces a
well-formed semantic representation (see chapter 3 for discussion). In the
first case (1.4), the stipulative PS rules (or their analogs) can be discarded in
favor of a general principle governing broad classes of modification types.
In the second (1.5), there is no need to posit a difference in the iterability of
␯ as opposed to other heads, because the distinction shown follows from the
adjuncts’ differing lexical requirements.
This view of adverbial licensing makes the overall grammar more restrictive by banning reference to different syntactic structures for different semantic classes of adjuncts; instead, differences like those shown in (1.4)–(1.5) fall
out from the different, and independently necessary, types of semantic representations in the lexicon. A second restrictive property is that UG disallows


6

Introduction

movements of adjuncts solely to receive their proper interpretation, as has
sometimes been proposed for modal adverbs like probably in (1.6).
(1.6) Dan has probably bought a microwave.
In Laenzlinger 1997, for example, the adverb can only be licensed in Comp
and moves at LF for this to be possible. However, some further licensing
constraint must be imposed on its surface position; otherwise all positions
below Comp should be permissible, contrary to fact:
(1.7) Dan has bought (*probably) a microwave (*probably). (with no “focusing” reading or comma intonation)
Allowing modal adverb licensing in situ for (1.6)–(1.7) correctly accounts

for the facts (see chapter 2), obviates the need for two separate licensing
mechanisms (one at the surface and one at LF), and keeps adverbial-licensing
principles more restrictive (by disallowing this sort of movement).
In sum, the specific goals of this book are (a) to posit grammatical principles
that predict the base positions for all types of adverbial adjuncts; (b) by doing
so, to illuminate the nature of the interfaces between LF and semantic representation, and (to a lesser extent) between syntax and phonology/morphology;
and (c) to make the theory of adjunct licensing as restrictive and as general
as possible.
1.1.3 Syntax and Semantics
1.1.3.1 A Syntactic Theory
This book is intended to sit largely at the syntax-semantics interface, and is
meant partly to illuminate the nature of that interface. However, it is still primarily a syntax book: the most important goal is to account for the distribution of adverbial adjuncts. Semanticists will probably feel unsatisfied; although I propose or draw on various semantic analyses, these are often not
fleshed out to a great level of detail, and many questions important to semanticists remain unaddressed.
Yet, nice as it would be to have a fully justified and elaborated semantic
background for a syntax of adjuncts, I believe that its absence is the price one
must pay, at this stage, for developing a plausible theory of semantically based
licensing mechanisms that correctly predicts a wide range of empirical data
and yet keeps the relevant principles relatively few, simple, and restrictive. In


1.1 Introduction

7

a sense, the real goal of this book is to show that such a system is plausible,
providing workable suggestions for syntax-semantics mapping that can be
fleshed out and gradually corrected. It proceeds from the philosophical stance,
as expressed in Jackendoff 1983 and elsewhere, that the syntactic and semantic
systems of natural language dovetail to such an extent that robust results on
either side can tell us something about the nature of the corresponding parts

of the other. Specifically, the hope is that, despite any shortcomings of the
semantic analyses herein, whatever good results they have for syntax will
provide evidence that something about them is on the right track and that they
can be shored up in a way to preserve those beneficial results.
1.1.3.2 Important Terminology
That both syntax and semantics are tightly involved here necessitates some
care with terminology. I adopt the syntacticians’ typical usage in most cases.
Three sets of terminological distinctions are especially important. First, I refer
to arguments and adjuncts rather than to arguments and modifiers:
(1.8) a. argument – a phrase semantically required by some predicate to
combine with that predicate
b. adjunct – nonargument
The definitions in (1.8) are meant to apply to the core cases; there are certainly
gray areas, questions of how require ought to be defined, and other issues; but
this ought to be sufficient as a start. Note that adjunct is defined semantically,
in opposition to argument. However, the use of this term over any other is
meant to reflect a hypothesis about the mapping of such phrases to syntax:
that they are situated in adjoined positions.
The second set of terms is shown in (1.9):
(1.9) a. adjunct – nonargument
b. adverbial – adjunct typically taking a Fact-Event Object (FEO)
(proposition/event) or a time interval as its argument
c. adverb – adverbial of the syntactic category Adv
Adjuncts, defined in (1.8), include both adverbials and adjectivals (i.e., AdjPs
and phrases that function like them, such as relative clauses), whose main
function is to modify a nominal element.3 Adverbials normally modify verbs
or “sentential” objects (IP, CP, and VP if the latter includes all arguments of V,
etc.); both of these are assumed here to correspond to events or propositions

8

Introduction

of some sort. (Some adverbials with appropriate meanings, such as roughly or
even, may adjoin to nominal phrases like DPs, but they still have an adverbial
function when doing so.) Adverb refers to phrases of the category Adv, defined
primarily as those restricted to adverbial function. Thus in this terminology it
is inaccurate, for example, to call Tuesday or every time an NP-adverb (e.g.,
as for Larson 1985 or Alexiadou 2000); such phrases are adverbials of the
category NP, or DP in more current theory (or possibly PP, if a zero-preposition
analysis is adopted).
Finally, within the event-based semantics adopted here it is important to
distinguish the terms event and eventuality in (1.10). I use the syntactician’s
typical usage, in which the former term covers all the aspectual types of
accomplishment, achievement, process, and state.
(1.10) a. event – state, process, accomplishment, achievement
b. eventuality
The semanticist’s normal usage takes only the first three as events, in opposition to states, with events and states together making up the category of
eventualities. For the semanticist’s narrower grouping of accomplishment/
achievement/process, I use the term quantized event (or q-event). Although
this is sometimes unwieldy, adopting the semanticist’s grouping would be
even more unwieldy where the distinctions among these subtypes are unimportant, which is the case most of the time in the following chapters.

1.2 Overview of Data and Approaches
1.2.1 Why?
In this section I provide a brief overview of some of the most important data
to account for and outline the different types of licensing theories and classifications of adverbials in the literature. This will help to make sense of a set of
standard problems for adjunct distribution and provide a framework for understanding some of the arguments about the architecture of adjunct-licensing
theory.

1.2.2 The Classification of Adverbial Adjuncts
There are innumerable ways to classify adjuncts, but the consensus in (at least)
current formal syntax is that the most important determinants of distribution


1.2 Overview of Data and Approaches

9

are semantic, on some level. I do not pretend that the classification I assume
in this book is the best, nor the most definitive; it represents an informed
working hypothesis about the semantic distinctions that are most relevant
for predicting syntactic generalizations, to be revised as research proceeds.
(For other classificatory schemes of a similar level of detail, see Quirk et al.
1972: chapter 8, and Ramat and Ricca 1998: 192. Delfitto 2000: 22ff. provides
a useful discussion of past classifications.) (1.11) is divided up according to
the way in which the adjunct combines semantically with an FEO, that is,
events or propositions, or with some other semantic element.
(1.11) a. predicational
speaker-oriented: frankly, maybe, luckily, obviously
subject-oriented: deliberately, stupidly
exocomparative: similarly
event-internal: tightly, partially
b. domain: mathematically, chemically
c. participant: on the wall, with a bowl, for his aunt
d. functional
time-related: now, for a minute, still
quantificational: frequently, again, precisely
focusing: even, just, only

negative: not
clausal relations: purpose, causal, concessive, conditional, etc.
Predicational adverbs require their sister constituent to be their FEO argument, mapping them onto a gradable scale: mostly propositions for speakeroriented adverbials, events for subject-oriented adverbials, and so on. Domain
adjuncts bind a special sort of variable associated with the verb. Participant
modifiers take a basic event argument in the same way that arguments of
the main predicate do. Functional adjuncts are heterogeneous, differing from
these others in being nongradable or in invoking focus-presupposition structures, for example (more work is needed to subclassify this large group than
for the others). Some subclasses must be cross-classified; for example, domain adverbs share the open-class property of predicationals, and time-related
and quantificational groups are closely related (as in the case of frequency
adverbs). Similarly, never has both negative and aspectual characteristics,
scarcely involves a mix of temporal and focusing properties, and so on. Ultimately, the most revealing classification will likely involve a small set of features based on the most important semantic properties for predicting syntactic
distribution.


10

Introduction

(1.12b–f) show rough correlations between the FEO labels to be assumed
here – given in approximate association with syntactic categories in (1.12a) –
and other adverb subclassification schemes:4
(1.12)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.

[SPEECH-ACT [PROPOSITION

[EVENT
[EVENT-INTERNAL V]]]]
CP
IP
VP?
VP
Jackendoff 1972
- - - -speaker-oriented- - - - subject-oriented manner
Quirk et al. 1972
conjunct
- - - - - - - - - -disjunct- - - - - - - - - - process adjunct
McConnell-Ginet 1982 - - - - - - - -Ad-S- - - - - - - Ad-VP - - - - - - - Ad-V
Frey and Pittner 1999
frame
proposition
event
process
Various works
framing
clausal negative time - - - - -aspectual- - - - -

It has become widely recognized that such sets of base positions can be generally organized into “fields” or “zones,” represented approximately in (1.12).
Manner and measure adverbs occur in the lowest of these, roughly corresponding to VP; nonmanner adverbs like cleverly, deliberately (both subjectoriented for Jackendoff), or already are somewhat higher, normally around
Infl and the auxiliaries, while sentential adjuncts like maybe, unfortunately,
now, or frankly (speaker-oriented for Jackendoff) are in the highest zone.
I take the view that these distinctions are only partly to be predicted
from information in an adjunct’s lexical entry. While the lexical meaning
of a given adjunct is fundamental to understanding its possible positions
(and other syntactic behavior), at least some of the differences in (1.11)–
(1.12) come from the application of different compositional rules to a unique

lexical entry. Perhaps most salient is the clausal/manner distinction among
predicationals, a major theme of chapter 2: these adverbs show a systematic
dual occurrence as either a manner adverb or a clausal (speaker- or subjectoriented) adverb, and for a healthy subset of them the adverb is unspecified
for the distinction (and for the rest, only minimally specified). The same
holds in other cases; for example, frequency adverbs take different scopes
that have sometimes been termed “sentential” versus “verb-modifying”; similarly, again has repetitive (event) and restitutive (event-internal) readings, and
locatives can act as either participant PPs, eventive modifiers (somewhere in
the middle of (1.12), left to right), or framing adverbials (Maienborn 1998).
The stance taken here is that important distinctions are obscured if the effects of lexical entries versus those of compositional rules are not properly
separated.
Finally, as noted, there is strong evidence that morphological factors also
help determine the distribution of adverbs, thus representing a crosscutting classification (although there is a connection between semantics and


1.2 Overview of Data and Approaches

11

morphology, if only in that functional class adverbs tend to be lighter), and
may vary cross-linguistically (e.g., in languages where true adverbs are a
very small class and are all morphologically light). Thus three main factors
determine the range of an adjunct’s possible position in a sentence: (a) its
lexical semantics, (b) the nature of the compositional rule system applying
to it, and (c) morphological weight. These factors apply to determine the differences among adjunct subclasses represented in (1.11)–(1.12), with strong
universal tendencies, perhaps completely universal for compositional rules
(b) but with some variation across languages for the lexicon ((a) and (c)). The
distribution (set of possible positions) for a given subclass is thus determined
for a given language by (a)–(c) within a larger set of positions allowed in
that language in general. This larger set is determined by (d) Directionality
Principles and (e) extended projection features (this matter is taken up again

in section 1.2.3.2).
1.2.3 Types of Theories of Adjunct Distribution
Given the recent debates in the literature on adjunct distribution, it is useful
to examine the range of stances theories may take in the mapping between
semantic properties and syntactic positions. There are at least two relevant
issues. The first concerns the balance of syntactic and semantic principles
responsible for licensing adjuncts in their range of positions.
1.2.3.1 Three Approaches
On one end of this syntax-semantics continuum, I ignore the extreme Structuralist view that denies any role for semantics, simply puts all adjuncts having the same possible range of positions into one class, and then (somehow)
syntactically links the class to that set of positions. On the other end, I ignore
the extreme semantic position claiming that an adjunct may appear wherever
it can be interpreted, with no syntactic constraints; this view, plainly, is empirically inadequate. Between these two extremes lies a continuum, of which
one end moves toward greater use of syntactic principles and the other toward
greater emphasis on semantics.
One set of theories closer to the syntactic end is represented by Laenzlinger
(1996), Alexiadou (1997), Xu (1997), and Cinque (1999). As discussed in
detail in chapter 3, these theories assume an elaborated sequence of (often
empty) functional heads, mandated and rigidly ordered by UG, each of which
may license one specific class of adverb. For any two co-occurring adverbs,