A Cartographic Approach to Stacked Imperfective Adverbs in English

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to analyze the order of production of stacked adverbs related to habitual, continuous, durative, prospective, and inchoative (I) aspects, and the readings triggered by different linearization orders, in the light of Syntactic Cartography (Cinque, 1999, 2004, 2006). Our hypotheses were that 1) Cinquean linearizations “usually still”, “still almost”, “briefly almost”, and “briefly suddenly” and their correspondent non-Cinquean linearizations are ordinarily found in English, 2) Cinquean linearizations of these stacked adverbs trigger exclusively progressive scope reading, and 3) non-Cinquean linearizations of these stacked adverbs trigger exclusively regressive scope reading. We conducted a corpus analysis and applied a Forced Choice Test to English native speakers. The hypotheses (2) and (3) were refuted. Three interpretations were presented: 1) some scope readings may occur due to the influence of semantic principles, 2) there would be two merge positions for adverbs such as “almost”, one in the extended projection of low AdvPs, in a direct modification structure, and one in the specifier of a phrase in the Middlefield, and 3) non-Cinquean linearizations of these stacked adverbs would be a byproduct of remnant movements.