The syntax of adverbials in Chinese and Italian

Abstract

This study is a comparative analysis of the syntax of adverbials in Chinese and Italian in the context of an anti-symmetric view of clause structure. Through a detailed investigation of selected sentence adverbs, aspect adverbs and manner adverbs, various similarities and differences between Italian and Chinese are identified.

Chinese adverbials are mostly pre-verbal (with a few exceptions) while in Italian they can also appear after the verb. Such differences are plausibly accounted for through the verb-movement analysis: the Italian verb raises, overtly, to the left of adverbs, probably as a consequence of the rich inflectional morphology, while in Chinese the verb cannot overtly raise out of VP, due to the scarce inflectional morphology of the language. The traditional analysis of adverbs as adjuncts, coupled with directionality parameters, is not needed in order to explain the facts.

The study shows that when adverbs such as the Italian adverb presto and the corresponding Chinese adverb kuai (‘quickly’) appear in different syntactic positions, they may receive different interpretations. This fact cannot be properly captured by the adjunct analysis, but it is predicted by the F-Spec hypothesis, according to which each class of adverbs occupies a specific syntactic position within the functional projections above VP.

The double analysis of Italian bene (‘well’), which can be an adverb but can also (in specific cases) be interpreted as a predicate, is a clear example in support of the functional vs. predicational nature of adverbs, a fact also noted in the predicational analysis of the Chinese post-verbal V-deconstructions.

Finally, Italian adverbs like stranamente (‘oddly’) are ambiguous between a clausal and a manner reading when appearing in post-verbal / pre-object position, while in Chinese the corresponding adverb qiguai shows the same ambiguity in the pre-verbal position. This, again, is associated with the possibility in Italian, but not in Chinese, for the verb to raise to the left of adverbs.

Overall, the study supports the view that several word order and interpretative properties which differ between languages can be reduced to a few abstract syntactic principles.