abstract Case

being Case-marked is assumed to be a universal property of overt nominal expressions. Whenever there is no visible marking, we assume there to be invisible Case on the given nominal expression.

adjacency

according to traditional analyses Case assigner and Case assignee must be adjacent, next to each other. This accounts for why the sentence *Mary speaks fluently English is ungrammatical.

adjective

a constituent with the feature composition: [+N, +V, –F] modifying nouns, e.g. mad in mad cow. These constituents cannot have nominal complements, their semantically nominal complement must appear as a Prepositional Phrase with the rescue strategy of of-insertion.

adjunct

a constituent not selected by a head.

adjunction

a type of movement where a new position is formed as a result of the movement creating an adjunction structure, like the (simplified) movement of the PP in the following tree structure representation where the S node is doubled:

adverb

a constituent with the feature composition [+N, +V, –F] used to modify a verb (as in everything went smoothly) or a sentence (as in Unfortunately, I did not pass the first exam). In this approach adverbs and adjectives belong to the same category, the difference between them being what they modify.

agent

one of the thematic or theta-roles, where the argument deliberately performs an action, as Jamie in Jamie sang a song or Robert in Robert kicked the cat. In terms of the UTAH the agentive theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of vP, similarly to experiencer arguments.

arguments

the participants minimally involved in an action defined by the predicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called an external argument.

aspectual morpheme

the morphemes -ing and -en responsible for the progressive and perfective aspectual meanings, respectively.

branch

lines connecting the nodes in tree-structure representations.

Case assigner

a head that has the ability to assign Case, like V(erb), P(reposition) and finite I(nflection).

clause

a structure containing a (visible or invisible) subject and a predicate.

experiencer

one of the thematic or theta-roles where the argument experiences some physical or mental state, like Mary in Mary was afraid of dogs. The experiencer theta-role is assigned in the specifier position of vP, similarly to the agent role. If both an agent and an experiencer argument are selected by the verb there are two vPs projected and the experiencer occupies the specifier position of the lower vP.

light verb

a verb occupying the head of a vP used in combination with another element, typically a noun or verb, where the light verb’s contribution to the meaning of the whole construction is less than that of a fully thematic main verb, e.g. to take a shower=to shower. Certain verbs expressing aspectual (be, have) or modal (let) meaning also belong here. According to the proposals in the present book the following constituents can appear within the vP in a visible or abstract form (see also vP-shells):

– agentive arguments in the specifier positions

– experiencer arguments in the specifier position

– goal arguments in the double-object construction as specifiers

– the passive -en morpheme in the head of vP

– the aspectual morphemes -en and -ing in the head of vP

– the tense morpheme in the head of vP

movement

S-structure constituents do not always appear in the position where they are base-generated in D-structure, they often move from their base positions to other structural positions. There can be various reasons motivating movement, see wh-movement and DP-movement.

object

a DP complement immediately following the verb. It can move to the subject position in passive sentences. See also direct object, indirect object.

sentential adverb

an adverb which modifies the meaning of the sentence, e.g. fortunately.

specifier position

a position defined by X-bar Theory. The specifier is sister to X', daughter of XP. It is a phrasal position, the nature of the phrase depends on what it is the specifier of. E.g. the specifier of IP is the subject, the specifier of DP is the possessor in possessive structures.

S(urface)-structure

post-movement structure containing the traces of moved constituents.

theme

one of the thematic roles where the argument is not affected by the action described by the verb e.g. in Peter saw John nothing directly happens to John as a result of being seen. In terms of the UTAH the theme theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of the VP.

there-construction: see existential there-construction.

unaccusative verb

a verb taking one argument to which it assigns a theme theta-role in the specifier position of a VP. They may also optionally take a location or path argument expressed by a PP. Some of the unaccusative verbs in English are arrive, appear, sit, they are typically verbs of movement or location. Unaccusative verbs can appear in the existential there construction or locative inversion structures. They do not take objects of any kind, see also cognate object.

vP (pronounced: little vP)

a phrase headed by a light verb taking a VP complement hosting agent or experiencer arguments in its specifier position. For a list of elements that can appear in vp see light verb.

VP adverb

an adverb which modifies the meaning of the verb, e.g. always, already, never.

word category

a set of expressions that share certain linguistic features, a grouping of words that cluster together, e.g. noun, verb. See also functional category, thematic category.

X-bar theory

a module of GB containing three very simple rules to describe the structure of the expressions of a language. See also specifier rule, complement rule, adjunct rule.

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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

5.4.1 Adverbs

Adverbs are the classic verbal modifiers. We should be careful, however, to distinguish between them, as some do not modify within the verbal domain of the clause, but have a wider domain of operation, modifying clausal elements. Roughly we can separate VP adverbs from sentential adverbs. Consider the following examples:

(168)ahe certainly will find out
bhe will quickly find out

The adverb in (168a) modifies the meaning of the whole clause: what is certain is that he will find out. In contrast, the adverb in (168b) modifies the verb, stating that it will be done in a certain manner (i.e. quickly). Note the different positions of these two adverbs: the sentential adverb precedes the modal auxiliary while the VP adverb follows it and is therefore closer to the VP. Indeed, placing the VP adverb further from the VP often produces an ungrammaticality:

(169)a*he quickly will find out
b*she suddenly has realised her mistake
c*the doctor thoroughly may examine the patient

These sentences can be made more acceptable if heavy stress is placed on the finite element, but with neutral stress they are ungrammatical, indicating that something special has to happen to get the adverb away from the VP it modifies.

It seems a reasonable conclusion therefore that VP adverbs are adjoined to the VP itself. But the VP is a fairly complex structure, as we have seen. Where in the VP can the adverb adjoin? Consider the possible range of positions we can find the adverb in:

(170)awill accurately have been making notes
bwill have accurately been making notes
cwill have been accurately making notes
d*will have been making accurately notes
ewill have been making notes accurately

There looks to be a good deal of freedom in determining the position of the adverb and thus it appears to be able to adjoin to virtually any part of the VP. The one exception is that the adverb may not intervene between the verb and its object. However, the adjacency requirement between the verb and its object is not so straightforward to account for under the assumptions we have been making. Other accounts of this restriction have made different assumptions. For example, Radford (1988) assumes that the object is in the complement position of the verb and that the adjacency requirement between the two is a reflex of X-bar theory itself: the head must be adjacent to its complement otherwise an ill formed structure results:

(171)

If an adjunct is placed between the head and its sister, i.e. the complement, the branches of the structure cross and this is not a possible configuration. The problem with this account, however, besides its reliance on the assumption that complements are all sisters to the head, is that it is not at all clear why various movement phenomena would not separate the head from its complement. Another account, due to Stowell (1981) assumes that the verb is responsible for assigning Case to the object and that there is an adjacency requirement on Case assigners and assignees. As we have assumed that the theme gets its Case from the light verb, we cannot use Case adjacency to account for why the verb and its theme argument cannot be separated. Even if we assume that Case assigners must be adjacent to the element they Case mark, this will not prevent the verb moving to a higher light verb position allowing an adverb to come between the two:

(172)

This structure has the adverb phrase adjoined to the lower vP and the verb moving to the higher light verb. Such a structure would be possible either when there is both an agent and an experiencer argument, or if the top light verb is an aspectual morpheme. The structure that would be produced however would be ungrammatical as the adverb would appear between the verb and its theme argument.

We might try to account for this restriction by limiting the kinds of structure that the adverb can adjoin to. But this seems unlikely as under certain conditions adverbs appear to be able to adjoin to virtually any part of the VP:

(173)athe letter1 might [VP eventually [VP t1 arrive]]
bPeter2 might [vP suddenly [vP t2 punch1-v [VP Paul t1]]]
cwater2 is [vP steadily [vP pour1-ing [VP t2 t1 out of the bath]]]
dBetty2 has [vP annoyingly [vP beat1-en [vP t2 t1 [VP me t1 again]]]]

In (173a), given that there is no light verb with an unaccusative verb, the adverb must be adjoined to the VP. In (173b) the adverb is adjoined to a vP headed by an agentive light verb and in (173c) and (d) it is adjoined to a vP headed by aspectual morphemes. Thus there seems to be no limit in principle on what the adverb can adjoin to. In each of these cases however, the adverb is adjoined to a higher position than the verb moves to. When there is no light verb, as in (173a), the verb is not forced to move out of the VP and in this case the adverb can adjoin to the VP. If the verb moves out of the VP, however, the adverb cannot adjoin to it. Indeed, anything that the verb moves out of is out of bounds for an adjunction site for the adverb. This suggests that the adverb interacts with the movement of the verb and it is this interaction that determines the possible adjunction sites for the adverb. Specifically, it seems that the verb never moves over the top of the adverb. Hence, we may assume that in principle an adverb can adjoin to any part of the extended VP, including any light verb projection, as long as the verb remains lower than it at S-structure and does not move over its adjunction position. There are a number of ways in which we might attempt to account for this fact, but at present we will be satisfied at leaving it as a descriptive generalisation.

Another observation that can be made from the data in (170) is that adverbs may appear behind all verbal elements. There are a number of possible ways to capture this fact. One is to assume that adjunction is free from ordering restrictions. Indeed it does seem that different adjuncts can come on different sides of whatever they modify: the PP modifier, as we shall see, typically follows the verbal complex. Thus, adjunction in general is not restricted to a particular side as are complements and specifiers. Adverbs therefore may simply take advantage of this freedom and be adjoined either to the left or the right of the VP. The alternative would be to have adverbs generated on one side of the VP and then achieve the other position via a movement. Jackendoff (1977), for example, argued for this position on the basis of the similarity between adverbs and adjectives. Recall that in chapter 1 we analysed adverbs and adjectives as belonging to the same general category, so one might expect grammatical principles to apply to both in a similar way. Jackendoff’s observation was that adjectives typically precede the nouns that they modify:

(174)astupid fool*fool stupid
bheavy book*book heavy
cprecocious child*child precocious

If we assume therefore that the basic position of the adjective is before the noun that it modifies, we might take this to indicate that the basic position of the adverb is before the verb that it modifies and therefore that its post-verbal position is a derived one. We are not really in much of a position to be able to evaluate either of these positions and therefore we will leave the matter unresolved.

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