Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

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In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998. 3 > VP > 10 > 9 > 8 > 7 > 6 > ....... This explains the order of the adverbs at least. If pre-verbal adverbs are still in the Specs of FPs, center-embedding of adverbs must stop at the last available [Spec,AdvP], being blocked by tsy in [Spec,NegP] from raising any further. The post-verbal reversal of Cinque’s order in Malagasy thus results from this leapfrog movement, which is possible because of the different composition of pre- and post-verbal adverbs in Malagasy. The two groups behave differently and one reverses its order due to the different location of the adverbs in the phrase. The most serious problem with this account of movement is its lack of motivation. Why should the AdvPs always raise above each other in such a complicated manner? Again, the motivation for this movement is part of the basic problem of Kayne’s restrictions. Perhaps their movement is motivated by a need for the heads of the phrases to check features with one another in a Spec-head configuration. If this is indeed the case, however, then the need to check is somewhat irregular, since the orders given here can sometimes be overridden and reversed. A checking requirement would mean that the FPs raise in a certain way for a certain reason most of the time, but are not required to do so in all grammatical sentences. For the present, I again leave the problem of motivating necessary movement to Kayne, suggesting only that is related to the type of checking relation required in Malagasy. 6.4 The Verb Phrase Now that the adverbs have the correct order, the problem is where the verb must move to gain its surface position 7 . To get the surface word order in the present tree, the VP has to move to [Spec,TsaraP], which in turn raises as in (52). VP movement is demonstrated in (53). (53) TsaraP 3 Spec Tsara’ VP i 2 tsara ti 6.5 The Object Object location and definiteness are accounted for in this system by the position of Agr oP. Objects optionally overtly move out of the VP to Agr oP, or they remain in the VP and raise to Agr oP at LF. If the object is definite, it raises overtly to [Spec,Agr oP], and if it is indefinite, it stays in the VP, which is compatible with research on Germanic languages (Diesing (1992) and Duffield (1995)) in which the definiteness of an NP is related to its location in or out of the VP. 7 The verb’s location in the sentence cannot be the result of head-movement through the adverb heads because the object can raise with it. If head-movement were taking place, the only way the object could raise with the verb would be if NP incorporation had taken place. Object incorporation, however, has not occurred in Malagasy, because the object adjacent to the verb (before adverbs) may be a conjunction, which is not allowed to incorporate into a head. 16
In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998. Why is this best described as AgrP? The position is unlikely to be vP because that shouldn't have variable placement, since is part of verbal phrase shells. It could be named something other than AgrP, but it would still be an empty functional category for the object to raise int. A question arises, however, which is: why is this movement only in some sentences? Is it a stylistic choice that allows violation of procrastinate, since we have seen that the object can also stay in VP and remain indefinite? There is a potential answer to this in recent research, which indicates object shift/raising out of VP “depends on information structure, in particular something like the contrast between specific and non-specific” information, and “AgrO-P has to do with the mapping from syntax to semantics, and nothing to do with case” (Bobaljik & Thrainsson (1997), Diesing (1996)). The AgrP to which the object raises in Malagasy appears to have no fixed location, as demonstrated in the Malagasy data, where it may occur both before and after the same adverb (in separate sentences), which does not have a constant position. (54) a. Tsy manasa lamba intsony Rakoto. b. Tsy manasa intsony ny lamba mihitsy Rakoto. “Rakoto does not wash clothes anymore.” c. Tsy manasa intsony mihitsy ny lamba Rakoto. “Rakoto does not wash clothes at all anymore.” (55) a. Tsy manasa foana ny lamba Rakoto. b. Tsy manasa lamba foana Rakoto. “Rakoto does not always wash clothes.” c. Tsy manasa foana ny lamba intsony Rakoto. “Rakoto does not always wash clothes anymore.” d. Tsy manasa foana ny lamba mihitsy Rakoto. “Rakoto does not always wash clothes at all.” Agr oP, rather than consistently occupying one set position, may be inserted anywhere between the lowest NegP to VP, which is what causes the appearance of the object between any of the post-verbal AdvPs. Because they are constant in their positions as heads of AdvPs, the object must be the element whose position changes to create the different word orders. This system makes use of one of the two possible alternatives to solving Kayne’s need for empty landing sites. I discussed earlier the necessity in Kayne’s framework for either a huge number of empty phrases that are available as landing sites for movement, or a mechanism by which empty phrases can be inserted into the syntax in certain positions or ranges of positions. This analysis makes use of the second option, with Agr oP being inserted in the location where it is needed for the object to move into it, which shows that this is one useful solution to Kayne’s cross-linguistic need for empty categories. The idea of building a tree through insertion of categories for the sake of movement when it occurs is at least partially supported by the formulation of Bare Phrase Structure adopted by Chomsky as part of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). Object movement may appear at first to violate an important theoretical restriction. If it raises out of the VP after the VP has raised, it is being extracted from a restricted domain (movement into or out of a Spec of a Spec should be blocked), and so 17
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Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

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