Adverbs and Adverbial Adjuncts at the Interfaces

Description

This book clarifies - on the basis of mainly Hungarian data - basic issues concerning the category ‘adverb,’ the function ‘adverbial,’ and the grammar of adverbial modification. It argues for the PP analysis of adverbials, and claims that they enter the derivation via left- and right-adjunction. Their merge-in position is determined by the interplay of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic factors. The semantically motivated constraints discussed also include a type restriction affecting adverbials semantically incorporated into the verbal predicate, an obligatory focus position for scalar adverbs representing negative values of bidirectional scales, cooccurrence restrictions between verbs and adverbials involving incompatible subevents, etc. The order and interpretation of adverbials in the postverbal domain is shown to be affected by such phonologically motivated constraints as the Law of Growing Constituents, and by intonation phrase restructuring. The shape of the light-headed chain arising in the course of locative PP incorporation is determined by morpho-phonological requirements. The types of adverbs and adverbials analyzed include locatives, temporals, comitatives, epistemic adverbs, adverbs of degree, manner, counting, and frequency, quantificational adverbs, and adverbial participles. Frontmatter Contents 1. Introduction 2. Syntactic, semantic, and prosodic factors determining the position of adverbial adjuncts 3. ‘‘Incorporated’’ locative adverbials in Hungarian 4. The syntax of Hungarian -vA adverbial participles: A single affix with variable merge-in locations 5. Adverbial (dis)ambiguities. Syntactic and prosodic features of ambiguous predicational adverbs 6. Temporal adverbial clauses with or without operator movement 7. Adverbial versus adjectival constructions with BE 8. Obligatory adjuncts licensing Definiteness Effect constructions 9. Comitative adjuncts: appositives and non-appositives 10. Types of temporal adverbials and the fine structure of events 11. Aspect and adverb interpretation – the case of quickly 12. Scalar adverbs in and out of focus 13. Adverbs of quantification, it-clefts and Hungarian focus Backmatter