Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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.” 10
In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998. restrictions would have to be lexically specified as occurring pre- or post- verbally. In this case, there would be no syntactic account for the fixed orders that do exist. It would definitely be more desirable to treat all of the AdvPs similarly, leaving them in some fixed order as a result of their base location. The different tsy orders are best explained by the presence of two NegPs in Malagasy, one before efa and one after mbola. Because both orders of adverb and negation have sentential scope, the presence in the tree of two separate locations for negation is logical. Rather than trying to move the adverbs into each other’s Specs and then having to account for their ability to maintain scope over the entire sentence from an embedded position, if the basic order of adverbs is tsy> efa> mbola> tsy, most of the word order facts fall out correctly. The existence of two separate NegPs has also been proposed for other languages. Cinque mentions it in his forthcoming work as a solution to a puzzling French word order. Pas and guère do not occur in the same position, as is evident in the following examples (plus follows pas). (48) a. Je ne pourrai (*guère) plus (guère) venir. "I could not come anymore (much)." b. Il n'a (*guère) toujours (guère) accepté. "He has not always accepted (much)." c. Il n'a (?guère) completement (*guère) perdu la tête. "He has not (much) completely lost his mind." d. Il n'a (?guère) tout (guère) mangé. "He has not (much) eaten everything." He states, Guère does not appear to occupy the same position as pas. It follows plus and toujours, while preceding completement and tout...A lexical infinitive can precede guère...but not pas. Guère would seem to be the negative counterpart of quantity adverbs like beaucoup, peu, trop, etc., but...it does not appear in the same position. While the latter are found between the passive and the lexical past participle (Ce livre a été beaucoup/peu lu l'année dernière 'This book has been much/little read last year'), guère has to precede both (ce livre n'a guère été lu l'année dernière 'This book has not been read last year')...All this suggests the presence of a second NegP, lower than that hosting pas/mica. Although the adverbs discussed by Cinque are different from the pre-verbal tsy in question here, the possibility of two or more NegPs in a sentence is plainly supported, and the different positions of the two tsys (before and after efa and mbola) are similar to the location differences of plus and guère. The existence of two NegPs is also argued in Zanuttini (to appear) for Milanese and Pavese, as well as in Brugger and Poletto (1993) for German. Further support for this proposal comes from Ouhalla (1990) (also Laka (1990)), who argues that languages can behave either like English and have the order AgrP> TP> AspP> NegP> VP, or like French with the order AgrP> NegP> TP> AspP> VP. It is a logical extension from this proposal of two choices of location for NegP to simply allow 11
Page 1 and 2: In The Structure of Malagasy, Volum
Page 9: In The Structure of Malagasy, Volum
Page 25: In The Structure of Malagasy, Volum

Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?