Closing remarks

I have argued in this chapter that the syntactic flexibility and the syntactic rigidity involved in adverbial ordering be simultaneously captured in a model that is based on the semantic properties of the elements involved (namely, those of the various adverbial classes, as well as those of the clausal domains they semantically compose with). The radical freedom of the choice between the pre- and post-verbal positioning of adverbials, with no effect on semantic interpretation, was derived as an instance of an option to base-generate adverbials in a lower position than their interpretive positions, from where they must undergo covert movement to the syntactic site of their interpretation. No dedicated syntactic templates, and no formal feature checking was proposed to model aspects of the rigidity and partial flexibility in the word order of pre-verbal adverbials, either. A postulated parametric property of Hungarian that was not deduced from deeper principles of grammar is that this language allows both arguments and adverbial adjuncts to be base generated and spelled out lower than their position of semantic interpretation. This yielded a revised account of the o radically free word order alternations internal to the post-verbal field, identifying a proper trigger for the movement operation underlying the permutations.

I conclude the chapter by returning to a loose thread in the discussion of the relative position of the Verb Modifier (VM) and fronted Focus. Throughout the presentation I have taken Focus to be higher in the structure than the neutral positon of VM. According to results obtained in Chapter 3, the position of the VM in a neutral clause and that of fronted Focus is the same; it was identified as the specifier of TP, where VM raises to in neutral clauses, and which is occupied by the fronted Focus in clauses with an id-focus, allowing VM to stay

lower, in the specifier of AspP. It this is so, then we lose our explanation of the fact that Low Adverbs may precede the VM but they cannot precede the Focus.

I suggest that the two types of results are not inconsistent, if we assume that it is not the VM element itself that raises from the specifier of AspP to the specifier of TP, but the whole AspP projection. This movement is preceded by movements removing all the material to the right of Asp from AspP, as Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000) proposed. These ‘purging’

movements may be required precisely because it is AspP that raises to [Spec,TP]: the specifier of TP apparently does not tolerate post-head material in the phrase that raises to it, either in the case of elements functioning as Focus nor in the case of elements functioning as VM. If a Low Adverb LA is adjoined to AspP, as the analysis in the present chapter has it, then it raises together with AspP to [Spec,TP]. Depending on whether the verb is taken to move by head movement separately to T, or stays in the AspP constituent raising to [Spec,TP], we may generate the two structures in (41). This resolves the technical point of tension between the relevant outcome of the present chapter and Chapter 3.

1

(41) a. [TP [AspP LA [AspP VM V ----]] T [ . . . ]]

b. [TP [AspP LA [AspP VM ----]] [T V] [ . . . ]]

In fact, there may be indirect evidence for the analysis in (41a). É. Kiss (2002) points out that coordination below the VM, including the verb and material following it, is unacceptable, while coordination below the fronted Focus is possible. If neutral sentences have the structure in (41a), then the resistence of the string beginning with the verb to coordination (and in fact to some forms of ellipsis) is predicted: this string does not form a constituent under (41a).

Notes

1 I concentrate in this chapter on optional adverbial adjuncts, and disregard obligatory adverbial elements that function as a complement (i-ii) or secondary predicate (iii), or must appear for informations structural or other reasons (iv).

(i) He treated her *(rudely)

(ii) János *(rosszul) viselkedett J-nom badly behaved

‘John behaved badly.’

(iii) A csapat a meccs végére *(laposra) verte az ellenfelet the team-nom the game end-poss-to flat-onto beat-past the opponent-acc

‘The team knocked the opponent out by the end of the game.’

(iv) This wine sells *(easily)

2 A semantic distinction between different types of adverbs is commonly accepted. For instance, a basic distinction between sentence and verb or verb phrase adverbs is generally assumed, though, as Tenny (2000) notes, its nature and how it figures in semantic categorizations of adverbs has long been a subject of discussion (e.g., Thomason and Stalnaker 1973, Lakoff 1973, McConnell-Ginet 1982).

3 In what follows, I deliberately avoid relying on any technical apparatus that is not indispensable to develop my proposal. As my proposal is compatible with a variety of formal semantic implementations, in presenting the analysis I refrain from explicitly adopting any one of the specific possible alternative executions, since a choice among these will not be directly relevant to my central claims.

4 These terms, even if commonly uses, are somewhat imprecise. Topic and focus elements are not defined as such directly by their discourse roles (cf. the “old” (“given”) vs. “new” status in terms of the Prague School). The crucial factor in the case of Focus is the (logical) semantic identificational logical predicate role (which also affects truth conditions and involves the alternatives of the focussed constituent; see É. Kiss 1998), whereas it is the role played in the predication expressed by the clause in the case of Topics (so-called “aboutness topics”; see Strawson 1964, Kuno 1972). These roles do not strictly correlate with the concepts “old” (“given”) and “new”.

5 To deduce the fact that the syntactic range characterized by free word order corresponds linearly to the field that follows the verb, one of the following two generalizations needs to hold. (i) The verb must stay within the VP in both neutral clauses and non-neutral ones (which include negation, wh-expressions or Focus) in the surface word order. (ii) When the verb does move out of the VP, no VP-external constituent (e.g., an adverbial) may be placed between the surface position of the verb and the left edge of the VP. This is necessary to avoid the (false) prediction that such elements (if any) would have to precede the arguments and optional adjuncts positioned inside the VP. (i) is apparently contradicted by the applicability of certain syntactic operations (e.g., ellipsis, coordination) to the whole of the post-verbal domain without affecting the verb (see, e.g., É. Kiss 2002, Surányi to appear a). Further, the status of the descriptive condition in (ii) is dubious.

6 The term “Scrambling” is also used in a broader, descriptive sense in the literature, to refer to free constituent permutation (e.g., É. Kiss (1994, 2002, 2003) also uses it in this sense). In this dissertation the term is used in a narrow sense of the optional movement account of Chapter 4.

7 The example in (5b) is ungrammatical due to the generalization in (4a): the adverbial hangosan

‘aloud’ is not interpretable as the modifier of the constituent [gyakran felolvasta a dolgozatokat].

8 As pointed out at the beginning of the current section, it is not the aim of this chapter to provide a comprehensive discussion of adverbials in the clause. The enumeration of High Adverbials as well as of the types of adverbials listed below is far from exhaustive. As noted at the outset, I also put aside adverbials functioning as secondary predicates (e.g., resultative adverbials or the different types of depictive adverbials), nor those selected as arguments.

9 In the case of a negated verb form, már ‘already’ functions as the adverbial of future time with respect to the reference time. Some speakers use it as a High Adverbial in this sense:

(i) %Már János nem jön ma el

10 An anonymous reviewer of a paper version of this chapter suggested that adverbials like pre-Focus épp(en) ‘just’ and pont(osan) ‘exactly’ can be placed only above FocP, and therefore they constitute a separate, fourth group in Table 1. The group of such adverbials may be defined in terms of their sensitivity to Focus: they belong to the same class as csak ‘only’. However, it is not really clear whether (a) these focus-sensitive adverbials modify the focussed constituent itself, or (b) they are adjoined to FocP.

In any case, they can certainly appear quite far from the focussed constituent, in the postverbal field as well (see (i)-(iii) below). In the case of (a), an explanation based on Stranding might be in place, whereas in the case of (b) the analysis of the movement defined as Raising in subsection 3.2.2 could be extended to them.

11 Clauses containing gyorsan ‘fast’ are ambiguous. For instance in (i) either the period of writing a letter or the preceding period can be short. It is possible that this ambiguity does not simply depend on the structural position of gyorsan: this adverbial may belong to both the High Adverbials and the