ADVERB PLACEMENT - CONVERGENCE OF STRUCTURE AND LICENSING

This contribution addresses the following issues: i) the structural identification of adverb positions (adjoined, embedded or in Spec-positions); ii) interface conditions for adverbs (syntax-semantic interface); iii) serialization patterns of adverbs (post- vs. pre-head order). First, it is argued that important empirical generalizations are missed if adverbials are assigned to spec-positions of functional heads. This paper defends the claim that non-selected adverbials are either adjoined or embedded, depending on the relation to the head of the containing phrase: They are adjoined if they precede the head of the containing phrase. They are embedded if they follow the head of the containing phrase. Second, the relative order of adverbials is characterized as an interface effect of the mapping of syntactic domains on type domains in the structure of the semantic representation. Third, the differences in the pre- and post-head serialization patterns of adverbials that apparently support an adjunction analysis are reconciled with an embedding analysis.