PP Extraposition and the Order of Adverbials in English
Ad Neeleman, Amanda Payne
January 2019
 

In English, adverbials may intervene between the verb and a selected PP. We consider a range of analyses of this fact. The traditional account is that the PP shifts rightward across a right-adjoined adverbial (Stowell 1981). An alternative account is that the verb moves leftward across a left-adjoined adverbial (Pesetsky 1989, Johnson 1991). A third possibility is a hybrid account that assumes both extraposition and verb raising. Each of these analyses can be implemented in the traditional theory of phrase structure, or in more recent asymmetric/antisymmetric frameworks (Kayne 1994, Haider 2013, Larson 2014). Antisymmetry, for instance, can emulate PP extraposition through roll-up movement around the PP (Abels and Neeleman 2012). We argue that the order of postverbal adverbials favors an extraposition analysis, provided this analysis is combined with the auxiliary hypothesis that certain adverbials can direcly modify other adverbials (Rohrbacher 1994, Williams 2014). We also discuss which version of the extraposition analysis works best, suggesting that its symmetric implementation has the edge.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003663
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: UCL/University of Delaware; to appear in Linguistic Inquiry.
keywords: pp extraposition, verb raising, adverbial hierarchy, scope, amazon mechanical turk, syntax
previous versions: v3 [April 2018]
v2 [April 2018]
v1 [September 2017]
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