Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

8.4.The unmarked order of adverbial modifiers

quickinfo

This section discusses the unmarked order of adverbial phrases. Establishing this order is not an easy task since the placement of adverbials exhibits a certain amount of freedom; adverbials are like most clausal constituents in that they may undergo various kinds of movement. Subsection I reviews a number of movement processes that may affect the surface order of adverbials, so as to restrict the discussion in such a way that we eliminate their interference as much as possible. Because it is relatively uncontroversial that VP adverbials follow clause adverbials in the unmarked order, we will be able to split our investigation into two parts: Subsections II and III discuss the unmarked word order of various subtypes of VP adverbials and clause adverbials, respectively. For want of sufficiently detailed research, the results in this section should be seen as preliminary, as will also be clear from the fact that we will have to leave various questions open for the moment.

I. Movement operations affecting adverbials
II. VP adverbials
III. Clause adverbials
IV. Conclusion

[+] I. Movement operations affecting adverbials

This subsection will show that adverbials can undergo various kinds of movement, which complicates our investigation of the unmarked word order of adverbials considerably. We can curb the interference of movement, however, by investigating the order of adverbials in the middle field of the clause only, thus eliminating the effects of wh-movement and extraposition discussed in Subsections A and B. This reduction leaves us with movement operations affecting the word order in the middle field, such as focus movement and weak proform shift; these movement operations will be briefly addressed in Subsections C and D.

[+] A. Wh-movement (wh-question formation and topicalization)

Most adverbials are like other clausal constituents in that they can be moved into clause-initial position under certain conditions. This holds especially for adverbial phrases that can be questioned, as shown in (180) for three kinds of VP adverbials.

180

a.	Hoe	heb	je	geslapen?	Erg goed!	manner
	how	have	you	slept	very well
	'How did you sleep? Very well!'

b.	Waarmee	heb	je	dat gat	gevuld?	Met zand.	means
	with.what	have	you	that hole	filled	with sand
	'With what have you filled that hole? With sand.'

c.	Met wie	heb	je	gedanst?	Met Jan.	comitative
	with who	have	you	danced	with Jan
	'Who have you danced with? With Jan.'

It will be clear that this sort of movement may affect the relative word order of adverbials when more than one adverbial phrase is present. This is illustrated in (181) for temporal and comitative adverbials; although we will see that there is reason for assuming that temporal adverbials precede comitative adverbials in the unmarked order, wh-movement can easily reverse this order.

181

a.		Jan heeft gisteren met Peter/ʼm gedanst.
		Jan has yesterday with Peter/him danced
		'Jan danced with Peter/him yesterday.'

b.	Met wie	heeft	Jan gisteren	gedanst?
	with whom	has	Jan yesterday	danced
	'With whom did Jan dance yesterday?'

Many adverbials that cannot be questioned can still be placed in sentence-initial position by topicalization. This holds, e.g., for modal adverbs; although Section 8.3.3 has shown that they cannot be questioned, the examples in (182) show that topicalization can change the unmarked order of the temporal clause adverbial morgen'tomorrow' and the adverb waarschijnlijk'probably'.

182

a.	Jan gaat	morgen	waarschijnlijk	al	om drie uur	weg.
	Jan goes	tomorrow	probably	already	at 3 oʼclock	away
	'Jan will probably leave tomorrow at three o'clock already.'

b.		Waarschijnlijk	gaat	Jan morgen	al	om drie uur	weg.
		probably	goes	Jan tomorrow	already	at 3 oʼclock	away

Note in passing that there are additional restrictions on wh-movement; the examples in (183) show, for instance, that while temporal VP adverbials may cross temporal clause adverbials in questions, this is more difficult in topicalization constructions. Since this kind of intervention effect has not been studied in detail, we leave the issue to future research.

183

a.	Hoe laat	gaat	Jan morgen	weg?	Om drie uur.
	how late	goes	Jan tomorrow	away	at 3 oʼclock
	'When will Jan leave tomorrow? At 3 oʼclock.'

b.	??	Om drie uur	gaat	Jan	morgen	weg.
		at 3 oʼclock	goes	Jan	tomorrow	away

For our present purpose, it suffices to say that the effects of wh-movement can be easily eliminated by restricting our attention to the relative order of adverbials in the middle field of the clause; for a detailed discussion of wh-movement, we refer the reader to Section 11.3.

[+] B. Extraposition

Another way of affecting the unmarked order of adverbials is by extraposition, which is especially common for adverbials of the category PP or clause. We will see later that there are grounds for assuming that contingency adverbials such as vanwege het mooie weer'because of the nice weather' in (184a) precede comitative adverbials such as met Els'with Els' in the unmarked order. Nevertheless, extraposition of the contingency adverbial can easily reverse this order, as shown in (184b). In fact, (184c) shows that simultaneous extraposition of the two adverbials also requires the order to be inverted, a phenomenon that has become known as the mirror effect; cf. Koster (1974).

184

a.	Jan is vanwege het mooie weer	met Els	gaan	wandelen.
	Jan is because.of the nice weather	with Els	go	walk
	'Jan has gone walking with Els because of the nice weather.'

b.		Jan is met Els	gaan	wandelen	vanwege het mooie weer.
		Jan is with Els	go	walk	because.of the nice weather

c.		Jan is gaan	wandelen	met Els	vanwege het mooie weer.
		Jan is go	walk	with Els	because.of the nice weather

For our present goal, it again suffices to say that the interference of extraposition can be easily eliminated by restricting our attention to the relative order of adverbials in the middle field of the clause; for a detailed discussion of extraposition including the mirror effect, we refer the reader to Chapter 12.

[+] C. Focus movement

Even if we restrict our investigation to the middle field of the clause, we still have to deal with movement operations affecting the word order in this domain of the clause. One such movement operation is focus movement, which may move a contrastively focused phrase into a position preceding the negative clause adverb niet'not'. This is illustrated in (185), where focus accent is indicated by small caps.

185

a.	Jan heeft	niet met Marie gedanst.
	Jan has	not with Marie danced
	'Jan hasnʼt danced with Marie.'

b.	Jan heeft	met Marie	niet	gedanst	(maar	wel	met Els).
	Jan has	with Marie	not	danced	but	aff	with Els
	'Jan hasnʼt danced with Marie (but he has with Els).'

One way of excluding focus movement is by restricting our investigation to sentences with a neutral (non-contrastive) intonation pattern. With prepositional adverbial phrases it is often possible to exclude focus movement by using a weak pronoun as the complement of the preposition (or, alternatively, the weak pronominal PP ermee'with it'), as is illustrated in (186). For more information about focus movement, we refer the reader to Section 13.3.2.

186

Jan heeft	<*met ʼr>	niet <met ʼr>	gedanst.
Jan has	with her	not	danced
'Jan hasnʼt danced with her.'

[+] D. Weak proform shift

Weak proforms strongly prefer placement in the left periphery of the middle field of the clause, regardless of their syntactic function. That this also holds for adverbial phrases is illustrated by means of the locational adverbs in (187): while placing the adverbial PP in Leiden in a position preceding the modal adverb waarschijnlijk'probably' leads to a severely degraded result, the corresponding weak locational proform er must precede it.

187

a.	Jan woont	<*?in Leiden>	waarschijnlijk	al	jaren <in Leiden>.
	Jan lives	in Leiden	probably	already	years
	'Jan has probably been living in Leiden for years.'

b.	Jan woont	<er>	waarschijnlijk <*er>	al	jaren.
	Jan lives	there	probably	already	years
	'Jan has probably lived there for years.'

For our present purpose, it suffices to say that the effect of weak proform shift can be eliminated by simply excluding weak proforms from our investigation; for more discussion of weak proform shift, we refer the reader to Section 13.4.

[+] E. Conclusion

This subsection has shown that the investigation of the unmarked order of adverbials is complicated by the fact that most adverbials are like other clausal constituents in that they can be moved under certain conditions. In order to eliminate the effects of movement as much as possible, we will restrict our investigation in the following subsections to the relative order of adverbials in the middle field of the clause. Furthermore, we will only discuss sentences with a neutral intonation pattern and avoid the use of weak adverbial proforms.

[+] II. VP adverbials

This subsection discusses the unmarked order of the VP adverbials in (188). Since Cinque’s (1999) seminal study on adverbial placement, it has often been claimed that the order of VP adverbials is essentially free. Schweikert (2005) and Cinque (2006) dismissed this claim, however, and argued that VP adverbials have a rigid underlying order. This section will show that this claim is indeed correct, although we will end up with somewhat different conclusions about the unmarked order of VP adverbials than the order proposed by Schweikert.

188

Process: manner; instrument; means; volition; domain

Agentive: passive door-PP; comitative met-PP

Spatio-temporal: place; time

Contingency: cause, reason, purpose, result, concession

Predicate-degree: erg'very'; een beetje'a bit'

[+] A. Process adverbials

We will investigate the unmarked order of the process adverbial by considering the placement of the various subtypes relative to adjectival manner adverbials such as zorgvuldig'carefully'. Although it is not difficult to find instrument/means adverbials to the left of manner adverbs, as illustrated in the primeless examples in (189), there is cause for assuming that this order is the result of focus movement: the primed examples show that their pronominalized counterpart ermee'with it' cannot precede the manner adverb but has to follow it.

189

a.	Jan heeft	de ring	<met een kwast>	zorgvuldig <met een kwast>	gereinigd.
	Jan has	the ring	with a brush	carefully	cleaned
	'Jan has cleaned the ring carefully with a brush.'

a'.	Jan heeft	de ring	<*ermee>	zorgvuldig <ermee>	gereinigd.
	Jan has	the ring	with.it	carefully	cleaned
	'Jan has cleaned the ring carefully with it.'

b.	Jan heeft	<met zand>	zorgvuldig	het gat <met zand>	gevuld.
	Jan has	with sand	carefully	the hole	filled
	'Jan has filled the hole carefully with sand.'

b'.	Jan heeft	<*ermee>	zorgvuldig	het gat <ermee>	gevuld.
	Jan has	with.it	carefully	the hole	filled
	'Jan has filled the hole carefully with it.'

Observe that pronominal PPs are preferably split, as in Jan heeft er de ring zorgvuldig mee gereinigd and Jan heeft er zorgvuldig het gat mee gevuld, but this is not relevant here. Since instrument and means adverbials do not easily co-occur, we will not discuss their relative order here.
Example (190a) shows that manner adverbs tend to precede domain adverbials under a non-contrastive intonation pattern: a Google search (11/3/2015) has shown that the order medisch–grondig/zorgvuldig occurred only 5 times, while the order grondig/zorgvuldig–medisch resulted in 50 hits. This finding is consistent with the fact that domain adverbials tend to follow instrumental PPs such as met medicijnen'with medicines' in example (190b). Recall that the judgments given only hold under a non-contrastive intonation pattern: assigning focus accent to medisch much improves the marked order.

190

a.	Jan is	<??medisch>	grondig/zorgvuldig <medisch>	onderzocht.
	Jan has.been	medically	thoroughly/carefully	examined
	'Jan has been thoroughly/carefully examined medically.'

b.	HIV	kan	<??medisch>	met medicijnen <medisch>	behandeld	worden.
	HIV	can	medically	with medicines	treated	be
	'HIV can be medically treated with medicines.'

Example (191a) finally shows that volition adverbials precede manner adverbs. By transitivity we can conclude that they will also precede the other process adverbials; that this conclusion is indeed correct is shown in (191b) for a means adverbial.

191

a.	dat	Jan zich	<vrijwillig>	intensief <*vrijwillig>	inzet	voor de club.
	that	Jan refl	voluntarily	intensively	labors	for the club
	'that Jan voluntarily dedicates himself to the club intensively.'

b.	dat	Jan het gat	<??met zand>	vrijwillig <met zand>	vulde.
	that	Jan the hole	with sand	voluntarily	filled
	'that Jan voluntarily filled the hole with sand.'

The examples in this subsection thus suggest that the unmarked order of process adverbials is as follows: volition > manner > instrument/means > domain.

[+] B. Agentive adverbials

The passive construction in (192b) clearly shows that passive door-phrases precede comitative met-phrases: inverting the order results in a severely degraded result.

192

a.	dat	Marie het artikel	met Jan	besprak.
	that	Marie the article	with Jan	discussed
	'that Marie discussed the article with Jan.'

b.	dat	het artikel	<door Marie>	met Jan <*door Marie>	besproken	werd.
	that	the article	by Marie	with Jan	discussed	was
	'that the article was discussed with Jan by Marie.'

Although it is not difficult to find agentive door-phrases to the left of manner adverbs, there is evidence that this order is the result of focus movement: example (193a) shows that the door-phrase must follow the manner adverb if the nominal complement of the preposition door is a weak pronoun. Since comitative met-PPs must follow agentive door-PPs, we expect by transitivity that they also follow manner adverbials in the unmarked order: example (193b) shows that this expectation is indeed borne our.

193

a.	dat	het gat	<door Jan/*ʼm>	zorgvuldig <door Jan/ʼm>	gevuld	werd.
	that	the hole	by Jan/him	carefully	filled	was
	'that the hole was carefully filled by Jan/him.'

b.	dat	Marie het probleem	<met Jan/*ʼm>	grondig <met Jan/ʼm>	besprak.
	that	Marie the problem	with Jan/him	thoroughly	discussed
	'that Marie discussed the problem with Jan/him thoroughly.'

Example (194a) shows that comitative met-PPs precede instrument/means adverbials in the unmarked order: inverting the order gives rise to a degraded result regardless of the form of the nominal complement of the preposition met. Since comitative met-PPs follow agentive door-PPs in the unmarked order, we expect by transitivity that door-phrases also precede instrument/means adverbials; example (194b) shows that this expectation is also borne out.

194

a.	dat	Jan het gat	met Marie/ʼr	met zand	vulde.
	that	Jan the hole	with Marie	with sand	filled
	'that Jan filled the hole with sand with Marie/her.'

b.	dat	het gat	door Jan/ʼm	met zand	gevuld	werd.
	that	the hole	by Jan/him	with sand	filled	was
	'that the hole was filled with sand by Jan/him.'

The examples in this subsection have established that in the unmarked case agentive adverbials are located between the manner and the instrument/means adverbials, while agentive door-PPs precede comitative met-PPs. We therefore conclude that the unmarked order of process and agentive adverbials is as follows: volition > manner > agentive > comitative > instrument/means > domain.

[+] C. Spatio-temporal adverbials

In the middle field of the clause, temporal VP adverbials precede locational VP adverbials, and they both seem most comfortable in a position preceding the manner adverbs, although it is not easy to show conclusively that this is their unmarked position.

195

a.	dat	Jan waarschijnlijk	om drie uur	in het park	gaat	wandelen.
	that	Jan probably	at 3 o’clock	in the park	goes	walk
	'that Jan will probably go walking in the park at 3 oʼclock.'

b.	dat	Jan waarschijnlijk	om drie uur	zachtjes	wegsluipt.
	that	Jan probably	at 3 o’clock	quietly	away-slips
	'that Jan probably slips away quietly at 3 o'clock.'

c.	dat	Jan waarschijnlijk	in het park	intensief	wil	trainen.
	that	Jan probably	in the park	intensively	wants	train
	'that Jan probably wants to train intensively in the park.'

It is also difficult to establish the unmarked order of the spatio-temporal and volitional adverbials such as vrijwillig ‘voluntarily’ and graag'gladly', as the latter can easily appear in the positions indicated by “✓” and only marginally appear in the position indicated by the question mark.

196

Jan gaat waarschijnlijk <✓>	om drie uur <✓>	in het park <?>	wandelen.
Jan goes probably	at 3 o’clock	in the park	walk
'Jan will probably go walking gladly in the park at three o'clock.'

We assume provisionally that the volitional adverbs are base-generated above the temporal adverbials and that the alternate orders are derived by leftward movement of the spatio-temporal adverbials. If true, this gives rise to the following unmarked order of VP adverbials: volition > temporal > locational > manner > agentive > comitative > instrument/means > domain.

[+] D. Contingency adverbials

The examples in (197) show that contingency adverbials precede time adverbials; inverting this order gives rise to an infelicitous result. It is not easy to establish whether the various subtypes of contingency adverbs exhibit an unmarked order, as they do not easily co-occur; we will therefore not digress on this issue.

197

a.	dat	Jan waarschijnlijk	door de file	te laat	in Utrecht	zal	zijn.
	that	Jan probably	by the traffic.jam	too late	in Utrecht	will	be
	'that Jan will probably be in Utrecht too late due to the traffic jam.'

b.	dat	Jan waarschijnlijk	vanwege het vakantieverkeer	vroeg	vertrekt.
	that	Jan probably	because.of the holiday.traffic	early	leaves
	'that Jan will probably leave early because of the holiday traffic.'

c.	dat	Jan waarschijnlijk	ondanks de file	op tijd	in Utrecht	zal	zijn.
	that	Jan probably	despite the traffic.jam	in time	in Utrecht	will	be
	'that Jan will probably be in Utrecht in time despite the traffic jam.'

Example (198) shows that the contingency adverbials also preferably precede the volition adverbials.

198

dat	de minister	<??vrijwillig>	vanwege het schandaal <vrijwillig>	aftrad.
that	the minister	voluntarily	because.of the scandal	resigned
'that the minister resigned voluntarily because of the scandal.'

This means that so far we have established the following unmarked order of VP adverbials: contingency > volition > temporal > locational > manner > agentive > comitative > instrument/means > domain.

[+] E. Predicate-degree adverbials

VP adverbials such as erg in (199) normally follow the locational VP adverbials. Although it is not difficult to find agentive door-phrases to the left of predicate-degree adverbials, there is reason for assuming that this is the result of focus movement: Example (199a) shows that the door-phrase must follow the degree adverbial if the nominal complement of the preposition door is a weak pronoun.

199

a.	Marie	wordt	waarschijnlijk	<??erg>	in Utrecht <erg>	bewonderd
	Marie	is	probably	greatly	in Utrecht	admired
	'Marie is probably admired greatly in Utrecht.'

b.	Marie wordt	<door Peter/*ʼm>	erg <door Peter/ʼm>	bewonderd.
	Marie is	by Peter/him	greatly	admired
	'Marie is greatly admired by Peter/him.'

Because manner and degree adverbials do not seem to co-occur, the examples in (199) make the picture complete by showing that the predicate-degree adverbs are located between the locational and the agentive adverbials in the unmarked case.

[+] F. Conclusion

The discussion above has shown that VP adverbials exhibit the unmarked word order in (200). Since the relative order of VP adverbials has not received much attention in the literature so far, we have to leave it to future research to investigate whether this linear hierarchy can stand closer scrutiny.

200

Unmarked word order ofVP adverbials: contingency> volition > temporal > locational > manner/predicate-degree > agentive > comitative > instrument/means > domain.Unmarked word order ofVP adverbials: contingency> volition > temporal > locational > manner/predicate-degree > agentive > comitative > instrument/means > domain.

[+] III. Clause adverbials

This subsection discusses the unmarked word order of the set of clause adverbials in (201), which were also taken as our point of departure in Section 8.2.2. It should be pointed out that this set of clause adverbials is not identical to the set of adverbials that Cinque (1999) locates in the functional domain, as some of the these were shown to function as VP adverbials according to the adverbial tests introduced in Section 8.1; this holds, e.g., for volition adverbials like vrijwillig'voluntarily' and opzettelijk'deliberately'. The main conclusion of our discussion will be, however, that the unmarked order found in Dutch shows a considerable similarity to what is expected on the basis of the Cinque’s cross-linguistic structural hierarchy of adverbials in the functional domain of the clause. His structural, top-down order more or less coincides with the unmarked linear, left-right order in the middle field of the clause.

201

Polarity: negation (niet'not' ); affirmation (wel)

Focus particles (alleen'only', ook'too', zelfs'even', etc.)

Aspectual: habitual; iterative; frequentative; continuative; etc.

Clause-degree (bijna'nearly'; amper'hardly', etc.)

Propositional modal (waarschijnlijk'probably', blijkbaar'apparently', etc.)

Subject-oriented (stom genoeg'stupidly', wijselijk'wisely', etc.)

Subjective: factive (e.g., helaas'unfortunately' ); non-factive

Point-of-view (volgens Els'according to Els' )

Spatio-temporal: place; time

Contingency: cause; reason; condition; concession

Domain (juridisch gezien'legally', moreel gezien'morally', etc.)

Conjunctive (echter'however', derhalve'therefore', etc.)

Speech-act related (eerlijk gezegd'honestly' , etc.)

In order to facilitate the discussion, the adverbials in (201) are already listed in the order that more or less reflects their unmarked linear order in the middle field of the clause, although it is not always easy to demonstrate this because of co-occurrence restrictions. For this reason, we restrict ourselves to a limited subset of clear cases; a more detailed discussion is not possible at this stage for want of sufficiently rich empirical research. We will also divide the clause adverbial types into several larger subgroups. Subsection A starts with the adverbials in (201a-e), which we will refer to as scope-bearing adverbials, as these can be seen as operators over the proposition expressed by the lexical domain of the verb. Subsection B discusses the adverbials in (201f-h), which we will refer to as evaluative adverbials as these are involved in providing a subjective evaluation of the proposition expressed by the clause. Subsection C addresses the spatio-temporal and the contingency adverbials in (201i&j) and Subsection D concludes with the remaining cases in (201k-m).

[+] A. Scope-bearing adverbials

The polarity adverbials functions as the demarcations par excellence of the boundary between the lexical and the functional domain: in non-contrastive contexts, they are followed by the VP adverbials and preceded by the clause adverbials. We illustrate this in (202) for the comitative VP adverbial met ʼm'with him' and the epistemic clause adverbial waarschijnlijk'probably'.

202

dat	Marie waarschijnlijk	niet/wel	met ʼm	wil	spelen.
that	Marie probably	not/aff	with him	wants	play
'that Marie probably wants/doesnʼt want to play with him.'

Note in passing that there are robust reasons for assuming that at least the negative adverb niet is located in the specifier position of a functional projection NegP, which may also be the landing site of larger negative phrases in the clause; if so, it shows clearly that negation itself is part of the functional domain of the clause. We will not digress on this here but refer the reader to Section 13.3.1 for extensive discussion.
Example (203a) illustrates that focus particles such as ook'also' are placed between the epistemic modals and the polarity adverbials. Example (203b) show