Adverbs in Strange Places. On the Syntax of Adverbs in Dutch

Sjef Barbiers - Leiden University & Dutch Language Institute 

The unmarked position of adverbs in Dutch is in the middle field, i.e., in designated positions between the clause initial verb second position and the clause final verb position. This paper discusses four syntactic patterns in Dutch in which adverbs occur in marked syntactic positions: (1) Adverbs that occur in the embedded clause but must be interpreted in the matrix clause; (2) Adverbs that occur in the matrix clause but can be interpreted in the embedded clause; (3) Extraposed adverbs; (4) Predicate adverbs that occur in the position of sentence adverbs. These phenomena provide evidence for an analysis of adverb placement in Dutch along the lines of the Cinque hierarchy (Cinque 1999), supplemented with the traditional split between sentence adverbs and predicate adverbs (Jackendoff 1972). To explain the properties of embedded adverbs with a matrix clause interpretation (pattern 1), a new analysis is proposed for the bridge verbs denken ‘think’ and willen ‘want’ in which they move from a position in the embedded clause into the matrix clause. Adverbs in the matrix clause with an optional interpretation in the embedded clause (pattern 2) are the result of adverb raising. The properties of extraposed adverbs (pattern 3) and predicate adverbs used as sentence adverbs (pattern 4) follow from a VP Intraposition analysis.

References:

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2010. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jackendoff, Ray. 1972. Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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