Adverbs and Adverbials

[Bjoern Wiemer]

One comment on Lucyna Gebert's contribution to the discussion on adverbials:
     It is true that many temporal adverbials exhibit accusative morphology.
But it should be added that especially Polish distinguishes these adverbials
syntactically in that they do not change to genitive morphology if the
respective transitive predicate is negated. Thus,
        Przesiedzielismy z nim cala noc-ACC.
        'We spent with him the whole night sitting'
and
        Nie przesiedzielismy z nim cala noc-ACC.
        'We didin't spend with him the whole night sitting'
But:
        Napisalismy caly artykul-ACC.
        'We have written the whole article'
vs      Nie napisalismy calego artykulu-GEN.
        'We didn't write the whole article'.

Admittedly, in colloquial speech temporal adverbials of this sort are
sometimes also subject to the ACC-GEN-alternation as if they were "real"
arguments. (E.g., Nie rozmawialismy calej nocy-GEN 'We didn't speak with him
the whole night'), and the GEN becomes even obligatory if certain
intensifiers are added (e.g., Nie rozmawialismy z nim ani minuty-GEN 'We
spoke with him not even (for) a minute'). The question for me seesm to be
whether also other quantifiers, like NAWET 'even', require the GEN (Nie
rozmawialismy z nim nawet minuty-GEN/minute-ACC 'as above').

Best,
Bjoern Wiemer.

>At 09:36 14.12.98 -0500, you wrote:
>>Also in Slavic languages adverbials behave in the same way, ie. time
>>adverbials exhibit the accusative, behaving as if they were arguments of
>>the verb. In Polish we have:
>>Pracowal cala noc (he worked whole-acc. night-acc.=he worked during an
>>entire night)
>>Przesiedzial z nim godzine (he sit with him hour-acc. = he sit with him for
>>an hour)
>>Russian:
>>On prozil tam god (he lived there a-year(acc)=he lived a year there)
>>On prolezal nedelju (he stayed-in-bed a-week(acc)= he stayed in bed for a
>>week), ecc.
>>        Lucyna Gebert
>>
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Bjoern Wiemer
Universitaet Konstanz
Philosophische Fakultaet / FG Sprachwissenschaft - Slavistik
Postfach 55 60 - D 179
D- 78457 Konstanz

e-mail: Bjoern.Wiemer at uni-konstanz.de
tel.: 07531 / 88- 2582
fax:  07531 / 88- 4007
		- 2741

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