Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998.
each other to higher Specs, creating the surface order from the underlying one. Adverbs
in heads rather than in Specs actually may not be completely against Cinque, since he
does allow that a given language may be able to choose whether its adverbs are in heads
or in Specs. Malagasy appears to have both types.
Making this head adjustment, the underlying tree (relevant portion only) is in
(51).
(51) MihitsyP
3
Spec Mihitsy’
3
mihitsy IntsonyP
3
Spec Intsony’
3
intsony FoanaP
3
Spec Foana’
3
foana TanterakaP
3
Spec Tanteraka’
3
tanteraka TsaraP
2
Spec Tsara’
2
tsara VP
The first move is TsaraP raising to the Spec of TanterakaP, which then raises to
the Spec of FoanaP, which in turn raises to the Spec of IntsonyP, which finally raises to
the Spec of MihitsyP, as in (52) 6 .
(10)
NegP
2
2
tsy mihitsyP
2
intsonyP i 2
2 mihitsy t i
foanaP j2
2 intsony t j
tanterakaP k2
2 foana t k
tsaraP l 2
2 tanteraka t l
VP 2
tsara t v
“Tsy manasa tsara tanteraka foana intsony ny lamba mihitsy Rakoto.”
6 To get the possible variant order tanteraka> tsara, VP would move up to [Spec,TanterakaP], rather than
to [Spec,TsaraP], and TanterakaP would then raise as usual, leaving TsaraP below. This may create a
violation of cyclicity, since the object would have to raise and the VP would have to raise from below it to
above it. Because of the nature of the object’s insertion, however, the process may somwhow be
permissible. In addition to this, it seems it is another manifestation of the difficulty of having principled
movement in Kayne’s system, and so the problem does not have an easy solution here.
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