Adverb position and verb raising

[Joan Bresnan]

I agree with Yehuda's observation:

"I think we need to be careful in borrowing arguments for constituency from
constituent-structure-centric theories. In such theories, constituency is
essentially a representation of grammatical functions, and true
constituency argumentation tends to be weak to nonexistent. So, "it's an
adjunct so it must be in adjoined position" becomes something in need of no
additional argument (kind of like "every language must have a VP because
that's how subjects are distinguished from objects")."

With regard to Alex's observations about variable positioning of
nonfinite verbs and adverbs in Catalan, let's not forget the "short
verb movement" analysis (the nonfinite verb also moves outside of VP,
but to an intermediate position (head of an AgrP) between the T (=I)
and the VP--Pollock).  Such an analysis could also be easily adopted
in LFG, though Pollock's arguments for exploding I in this way in
English and French are pretty convincingly demolished by Iatridou in
her LI remark and reply in 1990.  She does, however, maintain V-to-I
for finite auxiliaries in English and finite verbs in French.

Joan

>>>alex.alsina at trad.upf.es said:
[...]

 >
 > So, to go back to Aaron's question, can we claim that, in all languages
 > in which an adjunct can appear between the verb and its complement, the
 > verb is in I? Is anything gained by making this claim? Without hoping to
 > give a definitive answer to these questions, I would like to suggest
 > that, on the basis of Catalan, another Romance language, the answer is
 > no. Like French, Catalan allows adjuncts to appear between the verb and
 > its complement, but, unlike what happens in French, there is no contrast
 > in this respect between finite and nonfinite verb forms: they can all be
 > followed by an adjunct and complements in this order:
 >
 > (1) a.  Llegia   sovint aquest poema.
 >         she read often  this   poem
 >
 >     b.  Ha      llegit sovint aquest poema.
 >         she has read   often  this   poem
 >
 >     c.  Li agrada llegir  sovint aquest poema.
 >         she likes to read often  this   poem
 >
 > In order to preserve the VP-adjoined adjunct idea, we would have to say
 > that nonfinite clauses also have an I position, in which infinitives
 > like "llegir" appear in (1c), and that nonfinite forms appear in I even
 > when there already is an auxiliary there, as in (1b). In (1b) both the
 > auxiliary "ha" and the main verb "llegit" would have to be in I,
 > somewhat stretching the idea that I is a preterminal node and should
 > only dominate lexical items.
 >
 > And the end result would be that verbs would always be outside their VP
 > in Catalan (and Spanish, which is similar enough in this respect). In
 > other words, VPs would always be headless (or headed by a null verb) in
 > such a language. I'm not sure how happy we would be with this idea.
 >