Adverb typology: a computational characterization

Abstract

This thesis identifies the possible grammatical positions for adverbs in multiple-adverb constructions. Cinque (1999) gives a cross-linguistic analysis involving numerous rigidly ordered adverb specifiers. It is shown that while many of the acceptable adverb orders in English are predicted by Cinque (1999), not all of them are. Some alternative orders, based on corpus data and large-scale acceptability judgments, are also grammatical. A new adverbial hierarchy with five distinct classes – a smaller number of classes than in Cinque (1999) – is introduced which allows for these constructions. Adverbs and adjectives are also shown to obey a cross-linguistic relativized minimality constraint on movement, originally proposed to apply to adverbs by Li and Lin (2012). Both the ordering restrictions explained by the reduced hierarchy and the movement restrictions explained by the minimality constraint can be implemented using Minimalist Grammars, an unambiguous formalism that is also compatible with semantic computations. Unlike adjective ordering (Scontras et al., 2017), adverb ordering is also shown not to be predictable based on a single factor like subjectivity. All together, the facts presented here indicate that while semantic factors impose additional constraints on adverb ordering, base-generated adverb placement in English can be explained by a five-level syntactic adverb hierarchy, based on five general semantic classes. The reduced adverb hierarchy is predicted to apply cross-linguistically as well.