Tor A. Åfarli (Trondheim):
The Gravitation of Adverbials

Mittwoch, 17.30 Uhr

Sentence adverbials are incredibly flexible even in languages with otherwise quite strict word order. Thus, adverbials in e.g. Mainland Scandinavian/Norwegian may possibly occupy positions in the front, middle or end fields of the clause; in the middle field they may occupy positions immediately to the left or right of a non-topicalized subject:

  1. Kanskje vil Jon aldri kjrpe rl.
    perhaps will Jon never buy beer
  1. Jon vil kanskje aldri kjrpe rl.
    Jon will perhaps never buy beer
  1. Jon vil aldri kjrpe rl, kanskje.
    Jon will never buy beer perhaps
  1. Vil kanskje Jon aldri kjrpe rl?
    will perhaps Jon never buy beer

I will argue that this follows from the assumption that the phrase structural status of adverbials is radically different from that of other constituents. More specifically, I shall argue that the argument projection of a clause, i.e. the verb and its arguments together with functional projections, is formed strictly in accordance with basic X'-principles, with constituents introduced in head, specifier or complement positions and with movement constrained by well-studied syntactic locality conditions. Adverbials belong to another world. They end up being left- or right-adjoined to designated nodes in the argument projection, thereby allowing considerable freedom as to linear placement. Evidence for the proposed analysis will be adduced from scope properties of adverbials and from the distribution of weak pronouns.

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