Mind your weight: ‘Motionlessly’ sitting between the object and the verb in Japanese

The object in Japanese is often displaced from its canonical position next to the sentence-final verb, due to motivations such as information structure or animacy. Such flexibility allows for an adverb to be placed between the object and the verb. In the literature, there are suggestions for an almost equal preference to place Japanese manner adverbs before or after the object, inferred from both online and offline results. We will present a corpus study with a representative Japanese manner adverb zitto ‘motionlessly’ to show that either order may be preferred in different accounts of word order variation, but none can satisfy both requirements of distance minimization and accessibility, which are manifested in competing directions in Japanese, a verb-final language. In both accounts, weight has immense effect and should not be neglected. By using two heuristic methods to measure the weight effect, we propose that this case study with an object and an adverb sheds new light on the explanatory power of the distance minimization account, in particular by the Mimimize Domains principle (Hawkins 1994), which operates at both levels of (1) the constituency construction of the full VP, which favors the object-first order, and (2) the Phrasal Combination Domain between the head of object and the verb, which favors the adverb-first order. It is also proposed to implement a complement-and-adjunct distinction in the MiD principle, as a step toward a more effective study method of weight effect which I shall call efficiency profiling.

Adverb of manner and its translations found in the novel “The Good Earth”

The novel the Good Earth is one of the popular novels that tell the story about Chinese culture. Some sentences contain an adverb of manner and its translation from English into Indonesian. The text is analyzed and viewed to find the translation of the adverb of manner. The purpose of this study is to analyze the source translation and get the meaning and its sentence. As we know that an adverb is a word that changes the meaning of a verb, adjective, and a sentence. Adverbs are words like hurriedly, quickly, slowly, and instantly. It modifies a verb or verb phrase. An adverb gives information about the manner, time, place, frequency, or certainty. Adverbials are words groups in which an adverbial phrase tells us something about the verb. They could be taken in the forms of adverbs, adverb phrases, temporal noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Some classifications of adverbial are found in the novel. It is called adverbial of manner. The research aims to find out the translation of manner adverb. The theory used is Brown and Miller (1992) describing that adverb of manner indicating how the event described by the verb.

The hidden side of adverbs

This paper will address the predicative nature of manner adverb(ial)s and of three types of sentence adverbs (subject-oriented, modal, and evaluative) in Italian. Predication often becomes overt by means of morphological correlates. Is it possible to find any such evidence with invariable adverbs? To unveil their predicative nature, a procedure will be suggested in which two sentences, one with a -mente adverb, the other with its cognate adjective (a) share the content morphemes (identity of the signifiant) and (b) entail each other (identity of the signifié as regards semantic roles). A number of such pairs will be discussed, examples of which include: Intelligentemente, Leo intervenne ‘Cleverly, Leo intervened’ and Leo fu intelligente a intervenire ‘Leo was clever to intervene’. We aim to ascertain if the argument structure of the adjective and the semantic role(s) which it assigns can shed light on the very same properties of the cognate adverb.

On the different interpretations of sentence-initial ainsi ‘so’ and the competition between three types of Verb–Subject order

This article is about different types of Subject–Verb inversion (nominal, pronominal, and complex inversion) in sentences introduced by ainsi ‘so, in this way’. We first make a distinction between four main interpretations: manner adverb ainsi, quotative ainsi, consecutive ainsi (expressing either an intentional or an unintentional consequence), and illustrative ainsi. On the basis of a corpus study, we show that nominal inversion often (but not always) combines with the manner interpretation, whereas the predominant function of ainsi + pronominal/complex inversion is to introduce an example or a consequence of the preceding discourse context. The data also contribute to the debate about the grammaticalization path of ainsi. Firstly, the unintentional consequence interpretation is argued to be a “bridging context” between manner and unintentional consequence. Secondly, given the preponderance of the illustrative interpretation, we argue that this under-researched interpretation be taken up in future diachronic and synchronic analyses of ainsi and its cross-linguistic counterparts.

Word classes and the scope of lexical flexibility in Tongan

Tongan is an Oceanic language belonging to the Polynesian subgroup. Based on previous work (Churchward 1953, Tchekhoff 1981, Broschart 1997), Tongan has been classified as a 'flexible' language by various typological approaches on word classes (Hengeveld 1992, Rijkhoff 1998, Croft 2001). This means that lexical items are per se not categorised in terms of major word classes, but they can function as noun, verb, adjective and manner adverb without morphosyntactic derivation. However, not all lexemes are entirely flexible occurring within all these constructions. So the crucial issue of how flexible Tongan really is remains. This question will be addressed by a survey based on a combination of syntactic and semantic word class criteria – basically following Croft's prototype approach (2000, 2001) but also considering Hengeveld & Rijkhoff's work (Hengeveld 1992, Hengeveld, Rijkhoff & Siewierska 2004, Hengeveld 2013) Evans & Osada's work (2005). It reveals the scope of lexical flexibility for various lexemes and semantic groups.

Ainsi

This article studies the adverb ainsi in its twin functions of manner adverb modifying a given verb, and of sentence adverb — here a connective. This dual functioning is characteristic of a number of adverbs, and as with them, all the characteristic properties of each of these types are verified. In both cases, the basic meaning of ainsi is that of ‘conformity’ — conformity of a manner of doing or being with another manner of doing or being, and conformity of the content of an utterance with a previously evoked state of affairs. For each of these two uses, we study the particular order of words, on occasion in relation to their character, and show that manner adverb ainsi is unique within its category in setting itself apart from other adverbial form types allowing “subject inversion”.

Autrement

The French manner adverb autrement, as indicated by its morphology, derives a representation of manner from another (autre = other) representation ; the latter may be retrieved either in a subordinate clause following the adverb (autrement que P) or in the context preceding autrement. In the latter case, studied here, an anaphor is performed, and this paper, based on a corpus study, shows how identifying the antecedent is guided by clues, ranging from the verb phrase where autrement occurs to the environing discourse structure. In some cases, those clues are so frequent that one can talk about ‘discourse strategies’ or even collocations. It is thus shown that the adverb’s interpretation obtains not so much from compositional semantics (even helped by context) than from the properties of the constructions where it occurs.

Some considerations on the structure of VP in Italian: Manner adverbs, movement patterns and the interpretation of indefinites

In diesem Artikel wird die syntaktische Struktur der Verbalphrase im Italienischen untersucht. Zuerst wird gezeigt, daß Adverbien der Art und Weise (Manner Adverbs) innerhalb der VP generiert werden (cf. eine ähnliche Position in Haider 1998 für das Deutsche). Es wird vorgeschlagen, daß Adverbien der Art und Weise den Spezifizierer eines VP-internen v-Kopfes besetzen. Weiter wird gezeigt, daß die italienische VP zumindest eine Scrambling-Position für das direkte Objekt und eine für das indirekte Objekt enthält, die zwischen dem VP-internen Subjekt und dem Manner Adverb projiziert wird. Dieses zeigt unter anderem, daß die traditionelle Annahme, daß sich sämtliche funktionale Projektionen im Italienischen außerhalb der VP befinden, revidiert werden muß. Zuletzt wird gezeigt, daß Objekte, die sich in eine der beiden neu eingeführten Positionen innerhalb der VP bewegen, als spezifisch interpretiert werden müssen, wie es für Objekte, die sich in derivierten Positionen befinden, zu erwarten ist. The paper gives an analysis of the syntactic structure of the verbal phrase in Italian. First, the generation of manner adverbs inside the VP will be shown (for a similar position, see Haider 1998 on German). It will be suggested that manner adverbs assume a specifier position in the VP-intern head. Further it will be shown that the Italian VP contains at least one scrambling position for the direct and one for the indirect object, which will be projected between the VP-intern subject and the manner adverb. This shows, among other things, that the traditional assumption must be revised that in Italian, all functional projections are positioned outside the VP. It will finally be shown that object moving into one of the two newly introduced positions must be interpreted specifically, as is to be expected of objects in a derived position.

VOS in Greek

This paper looks into the VOS order in Greek and its focusing patterns. Evidence from main and embedded VOS reveals that embedded VOS is more restricted in its focusing possibilities. If the focus effects of main and embedded VOS differ, then we cannot advocate fixed Focus Projections in the syntactic architecture like the cartographic approaches do. Chomsky (2007; 2008) divides features in two types; the probe-agreement ones which trigger obligatory movement and the E(dge) F(eature) which facilitates movement and yields information structure effects at the Interface. In effect, Greek VOS is viewed as the result of a single derivation in which movement is induced for the satisfaction of an EF. The focus effects that are present in VOS are not assigned in Syntax, but at the Interface. The claim here is that Syntax is ‘blind’ to information structure properties. Yet, in order to explain how one single derivation maps out to two distinct focusing possibilities, we employ the notions of accessibility and saliency, as these are discussed in Slioussar (2007) and developed in Kechagias (2010). Roughly, accessibility corresponds to topics and saliency to foci. In Greek VOS, saliency tends to mark constituents to the right of the verb (i.e. object, or manner adverb).