Cover not available
Part of
Adjective Adverb Interfaces in Romance
Edited by Martin Hummel and Salvador Valera
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 242] 2017
► pp. 81–109

Chapter 3
Before the complementizer

Adverb types and root clause modification

| University of Vienna
| University of Vienna

In this paper we investigate the distributional, morphosyntactic, and semantic properties of a particular construction found in Romance, as well as in other languages such as English. This construction involves a class of elements that appear in sentence-initial position and that are followed by a complementizer introducing a root clause (a CP in generativist terms). This class may comprise underived attributes (adjectives) and derived attributes (adverbs), depending on the specific language. We claim that these adverbial constructions, as a result of grammaticalization, can be analysed as structurally equivalent to other constructions with similar speaker-oriented meanings, such as quotative and reportative constructions. A further or alternative process of grammaticalization, instead, has yielded new adverbial forms which morphologically include the complementizer.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Typology of adverbs before the complementizer
  • 3.Pragmatic adverbs: Grammaticalization towards discourse
  • 4.Pragmatic function and silent predicates
    • 4.1Truth predicate and root clause modification
    • 4.2Hearsay, quotatives and reported speech
  • 5.Back to sentential adverbs: Type-C adverbs
  • 6.Conclusions and final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 21 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.242.04cru
References
Archivi del Sud
1996 Contami unu contu. Racconti popolari della Sardegna, Vol. I: Logudoro. Alghero: Archivi del Sud.Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
2004 Evidentiality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bellert, Irena
1977 On semantic and distributional properties of sentential adverbs. Linguistic Inquiry 8(2): 337–351.Google Scholar
Bowers, John
1993 The syntax of predication. Linguistic Inquiry 24(4): 591–656.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Company Company, Concepción
2004 ¿Gramaticalización o desgramaticalización? El reanálisis y subjetivización de verbos como marcadores discursivos en la historia del español. Revista de Filología Española 84(1): 29–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
CREA – Real Academia española: Banco de datos (CREA)
[online]. Corpus de referencia del español actual. [URL]> (20 December 2014).
Cruschina, Silvio & Remberger, Eva-Maria
2008 Hearsay and reported speech: Evidentiality in Romance. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 33: 95–116.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio
2010 Aspetti morfologici e sintattici degli avverbi in siciliano. In Studi sui dialetti della Sicilia [Quaderni di lavoro ASIt 11], Jacopo Garzonio (ed.), 21–42. Padua: Unipress.Google Scholar
2015 The expression of evidentiality and epistemicity: Cases of grammaticalization in Italian and Sicilian. Probus 27: 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Haan, Ferdinand
2005 Semantic distinctions of evidentiality. In The World Atlas of Language Structures, Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds), 314–317. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Demonte, Violeta & Fernández-Soriano, Olga
2014 Evidentiality and illocutionary force. Spanish matrix que at the syntax-pragmatics interface. In Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish: Diachronic, Variationist, and Typological Perspectives [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 214], Andreas Dufter & Álvaro S. Octavio de Toledo (eds), 217–252. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dendale, Patrick & Tasmowski, Liliane
2001 Introduction: Evidentiality and related notions. Journal of Pragmatics 33(3): 339–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erdmann, Peter
1997 Supplementive adjective clauses in English. In Language History and Linguistic Modelling. A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday, Vol. 2, Raymond Hickey & Stanislaw Puppel (eds), 1433–1451. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ernst, Thomas
2002 The Syntax of Adjuncts. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Etxepare, Ricardo
1997 The Grammatical Representation of Speech Events. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
2008 On quotative constructions in Iberian Spanish. In Crosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining: The Multifunctionality of Conjunctions [Typological Studies in Language 80], Ritva Laury (ed.), 35–77. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 From hearsay evidentiality to samesaying relations. Lingua 120(3): 604–627. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Nicholas
2007 Insubordination and its uses. In Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations, Irina Nikolaeva (ed.), 366–431. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra
2010 About the Speaker. Towards a Syntax of Indexicality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Grevisse, Maurice & Goosse, André
2008 Le bon usage, 14th edn. Brussels: De Boeck & Larcier.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez-Rexach, Javier
2001 Spanish Exclamatives and the Semantics of the Left Periphery. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 1999. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 1999, Leiden, 9–11 December 1999 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 221], Yves de Hulst, Johan Rooryck & Jan Schroten (eds), 167–194. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 Spanish root exclamatives at the syntax/semantics interface. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 7: 117–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernanz, María Luisa
2007 From polarity to modality: Some (a)symmetries between bien and si in Spanish. In Coreference, Modality, and Focus: Studies on the Syntax-Semantics Interface [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 111], Luis Eguren & Olga Fernández-Soriano (eds), 133–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Virginia
2007 Romanian adverbs and the pragmatic field. The Linguistic Review 24(1): 61–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 A main clause complementizer. In Main Clause Phenomena: New Horizons [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 190], Lobke Aelbrecht, Liliane Haegeman & Rachel Nye (eds), 279–296. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hummel, Martin
2012 Polifuncionalidad, polisemia y estrategia retórica. Los signos discursivos con base atributiva entre oralidad y escritura. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Attribution in Romance: Reconstructing the oral and written tradition. Folia Linguistica Historica 34(1): 1–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 The adjective-adverb interface in Romance and English. In Adjectives in Germanic and Romance [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 212], Petra Sleeman, Freek Van de Velde & Harry Perridon (eds), 35–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray
1972 Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kany, Charles E.
1944 Impersonal dizque and its variants in American Spanish. Hispanic Review 12(2): 168–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Killie, Kristin
2015 Secondary grammaticalization and the English adverbial -ly suffix. Language Sciences 47: 199–214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
1994 Time in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kocher, Anna
2014 Claro que son adverbios: Análisis de un proceso de gramaticalización. MA thesis, University of Vienna.Google Scholar
2015 Epistemic and evidential adverbial constructions in Ibero-Romance. Talk at the International Conference on Linguistics of Ibero-Romance Languages, Ghent, 14–16 December.
La Repubblica
 – Corpus. [URL]> (31 January 2015).
Laenzlinger, Christopher
1996 Adverb syntax and phrase structure. In Configurations: Essays on Structure and Interpretation, Anna-Maria di Sciullo (ed.), 99–127. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam
2011 Adverb agreement and split intransitivity: Evidence from southern Italy. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 96(1): 31–66.Google Scholar
Lonzi, Lidia
1991 Il sintagma avverbiale. In Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, Vol. 2: I sintagmi verbale, aggettivale, avverbiale; la subordinazione, Lorenzo Renzi & Giampaolo Salvi (eds), 341–412. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
López-Couso, María José & Belén Méndez-Naya
2015 Epistemic/evidential markers of the type verb + complementizer. Some parallels from English and Romance. In New Directions in Grammaticalization Research [Studies in Language Companion Series 166], Andrew D. M. Smith, Graeme Trousdale & Richard Waltereit (eds), 93–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lupşa, Cornelia Daniela
2011 Deconstructing the “Adverb plus complementizer construction” in Romanian. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 13(2): 91–98.Google Scholar
Lyons, John
1977 Semantics. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
NGLE – Real Academia Española
2009 Nueva gramática de la lengua española, 2 Vols. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Olbertz, Hella
2007  Dizque in Mexican Spanish. The subjectification of reportative meaning. Italian Journal of Linguistics 19(1): 151–172.Google Scholar
Pietrandrea, Paola
2005 Epistemic Modality. Functional Properties and the Italian System [Studies in Language Companion Series 74]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plungian, Vladimir A.
2001 The place of evidentiality within the universal grammatical space. Studies in Language 12(1): 349–357.Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia & Zanuttini, Raffaella
2013 Emphasis as reduplication: Evidence from sì che/no che sentences. Lingua 128: 124–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Radford, Andrew
2013 The complementiser system in spoken English: Evidence from broadcast media. In Information Structure and Agreement [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 197], Victoria Camacho Taboada, Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández, Javier Martín-González & Mariano Reyes-Tejedor (eds), 11–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramat, Paolo & Ricca, Davide
1998 Sentence adverbs in the languages of Europe. In Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, Johann van der Auwera (ed.), 187–275. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans
1947 Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York NY: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Remberger, Eva-Maria
2015 ‘I didn’t say it. Somebody else did.’ – The Romanian hearsay marker CICĂ . In Redefining community in Intercultural context, Vol.4/1. Selection of papers presented within 4th RCIC Conference, Braşov, 21 May, 2015, 31–41.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi
1997 The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of Grammar, Liliane Haegeman (ed.), 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi & Roberts, Ian
1989 Complex inversion in French. Probus 1(1): 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Ian & Roussou, Anna
2003 Syntactic Change: A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-Espiñeira, María José
2014 Emergencia e historia de la construcción es capaz que . In Llaneza. Estudios dedicados al profesor Juan Gutiérrez Cuadrado, María Bargalló Escrivá, María Pilar Garcés Cómez & Cecilio Garriga Escribano (eds), 205–218. A Coruña: Anexo de la Revista de Lexicografía. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Speas, Peggy & Tenny, Carol L.
2003 Configurational properties of point of view roles. In Asymmetry in Grammar, Vol. 1 [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 57], Anna-Maria di Sciullo (ed), 315–344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Suñer, Avellina & Àngela Di Tullio
2014 Bare adjectives as syncretic forms. Borealis 3(1): 23–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert
1978 Assertion. In Syntax and Semantics, 9: Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), 315–332. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elisabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme
(eds.) 2010 Gradience, Gradualness and Grammaticalization [Typological Studies in Language 90]. Amsterdam John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elisabeth Closs
1995 Subjectification in grammaticalization. In Subjectivity and Subjectivisation, Dieter Stein & Susan Wright (eds), 37–54. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Travis, Catherine
2006  Dizque: A Colombian evidentiality strategy. Linguistics 44: 1269–1297. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Auwera, Johann & Plungian, Vladimir A.
1998 Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2(1): 79–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Gelderen, Elly
2004 Grammaticalization as Economy [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 71]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 The Linguistic Cycle. Language Change and the Language Faculty. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 17 other publications

Corr, Alice
2022. Introduction. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. The expression of affect. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. A grammar for the utterance. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Utterances without commitment. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. The grammar of dialogue. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 251 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. The Grammar of the Utterance, DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Doing things with utterance grammar. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Vocatives. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Interjections and particles. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Conclusions. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 299 ff. DOI logo
Cruschina, Silvio
2023. L’espressione dell’epistemicità e dell’evidenzialità in siciliano. Gli avverbi in -ca . Cuadernos de Filología Italiana 30 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Cruschina, Silvio & Eva-Maria Remberger
2018. Speaker-oriented syntax and root clause complementizers. Linguistic Variation 18:2 ► pp. 336 ff. DOI logo
Kocher, Anna
2017. From verum to epistemic modality and evidentiality. Journal of Historical Linguistics 7:1-2 ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Staps, Camil & Johan Rooryck
2023. The interpretation of [+distal] in demonstratives and complementizers. Linguistics 61:5 ► pp. 1195 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. List of Abbreviations. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. xi ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Copyright Page. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. iv ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. General Preface. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. vii ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.