Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998.
orders, perhaps the unexpected combinations are simply the result of one adverb being
located in the Spec of the other to form a constituent, as Cinque explains the unexpected
orders he encounters in Romance. One would expect that, if this were true, the two
adverbs could not be separated and would have some sort of constituent meaning
In the unexpected Malagasy cases, however, both adverbs take sentential scope.
In this, they clearly have not simply moved to each other's Specs to form a constituent.
(44) Efa tsy nanana inona na inona izy tamin'izany andro izany.
already Neg had ' nothing ' 3p ' once upon a time '
"At the time, he already did not have anything."
(45) Tsy efa nanana inona na inona izy ve tamin'izany andro izany.
"At the time, did he not already have anything?"
In these sentences, the different orders correspond to different meanings. Efa tsy means
something like ‘it has already happened to a person that they did not have any money in
their pocket for a time’. In contrast to this meaning, if one person gave another money
and the second person returned soon after to ask for more, the first person, disbelieving,
would ask, "You did not already have some this morning?", using tsy efa.
A similar contrast obtains with mbola and tsy.
(46) Tsy mbola ny tokony ha tao rehefa misy ny olana.
Neg still 'what one should do' when exist Det. problem
"When there are problems, he does not yet know what to do."
(47) Mbola tsy ny tokony ha tao rehefa misy ny olana.
"When there is a problem, he still does not know what to do."
Tsy mbola corresponds to 'not yet', while mbola tsy means 'still not'. The first would be
used to discuss something which has not yet happened, but which is expected eventually
to occur. The second would be used to describe something that has not yet happened, and
may or may not ever occur. 4
The different pre-verbal orders that occur among sentential-scope adverbs thus all
include the negative tsy, which indicates that the variations in order are in some way
connected to the NegP which contains tsy. Perhaps tsy is exempt from the adverb
hierarchy and can appear in any position, or perhaps it is head-adjoined to other heads in
any position. Allowing tsy to insert itself in any position, however, would remove much
of the restrictiveness of Cinque's hierarchical theory, which is an undesirable result.
Free-insertion or adjunction of tsy also implies that other adverbs may be exempt
from hierarchy location restrictions and able to insert themselves in unrestricted
locations. To keep other adverbs from taking any random order, insertion location
4
It is important to note that efa and mbola do not display variable orders with respect to each other.
They do not really co-occur, having somewhat conflicting meanings (?? ‘already still’), but can do so in
some cases. Here, however, they have a different meaning from the regular sentential-scope efa and mbola,
functioning more as a constituent with no and the second mbola (mbola....no mbola).
(i) a. Efa
mbola tsy mahay lesona i Rakoto
no mbola mitabata.
already still Neg know lesson Det. Rakoto Emph. still talkative
“Not only does he not know his lessons, but Rakoto is talkative
too.”
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