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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Syntax Of Adjuncts by Thomas Ernst
This book proposes a theory of the distribution of adverbial adjuncts in a Principles and Parameters framework, claiming that there are few syntactic principles specific to adverbials; rather, for the most part, adverbials adjoin freely to any projection. Adjuncts possible hierarchical positions are determined by whether they can receive a proper interpretation, according to their selectional including scope requirements and general compositional rules, while linear order is determined by hierarchical position along with a system of directionality principles and morphological weight, both of which apply generally to adjuncts and all other syntactic elements. A wide range of adverbial types is analysed; predicational adverbs such as manner, and modal adverbs, domain expressions like financially, temporal, frequency, duration and focusing adverbials; participant PPs e.g. locatives and benefactives; resultative and conditional clauses, and others, taken primarily from English, Chinese, French and Italian, with occasional reference to others such as German and Japanese.show more