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. this raising should be ungrammatical. This problem has an easy solution in Kayne’s framework, where the Spec is actually an adjunction position, as in a structure such as (56). (56) XP 1 4 XP 2j XP 1 3 2 VP i XP 2 X 1 t j 2 2 NP 1 VP X 2 t i 2 V NP 2 Here, NP 2 is not actually dominated by anything except the immediate VP, according to Barriers theory (Chomsky 1986), since it is not dominated by all segments of the other categories. If the NP is extracted from this position, the higher XPs will not be barriers, since a barrier must fully dominate a category. In the Malagasy tree, therefore, the object may be extracted at any point in the derivation without crossing too many barriers to cause ungrammaticality. Object movement and Agr oP insertion are demonstrated in (57). (57) NegP 4 TsyP NegP 5 Neg MihitsyP 5 IntsonyPi MihP 4 4 FoanaP j IntP mihitsy Agr oP 4 2 2 TanterakaP k FoP intsony tj NP obj AgrP 3 2 2 TsaraP l TantP foana t k AGR t i VP m 2 2 TsaP tanteraka t l 2 tsara t m 3 > VP > 10 > 9 > 8 > 7 > 6 > NP obj “Tsy manasa tsara tanteraka foana intsony ny lamba mihitsy Rakoto.” This insertion and discussion of AgrPs has important implications for the theory of functional categories in general. Once Agr oP has been inserted into the tree and the object has raised to it, it must become invisible to movement in order to allow only grammatical word orders to surface. If, instead of forcing the AdvP below it to raise, the AdvP were to raise itself to the next-highest Spec, an impossible order would result, with the object before the verb. (58) ** NegP 4 18
In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998. TsyP 4 Neg MihitsyP 5 Agr oP 2 3 mihitsy t i Object 3 agr IntsonyP 3 FoanaP j 2 2intsony t j TanterakaP k 2 3 foana t k TsaraP l 2 2 tant. t l VP m2 tsara tm “*Tsy lamba manasa tsara tanteraka foana intsony mihitsy Rakoto.” To avoid this ungrammatical occurrence, there must be a restriction in the grammar such that non-content-full phrases like AgrP (which have no lexical content and are simply markers of agreement) are invisible to movement and cannot move themselves. In contrast to this, content-full phrases like AdvPs can and, in this case must, move, which may be attributable to the phrases being differently specified (some sort of A or A’ or Adverb positions), and thus being irrelevant to each other’s movement operations. A possible reason for the forced raising of AdvPs past AgrP may have to do with the requirement to check features in a Spec-head relation. Because AgrPs are noncontent-full, they do not have features which need to be checked with the AdvPs, but the lower AdvPs still must be checked, and so are always forced to raise around the AgrPs, consistently leaving them in their place. This would explain why lower AdvPs always raise to the next-highest Spec, and why the appearance of Agr oP does not interrupt this process, simply leaving the AgrP where it first appears. The issue of the existence of non-content-full categories is interesting for further exploration in more varied contexts, and may have implications for Chomsky’s view of the (non)necessity of non-content-full categories like AgrPs, but is left here as a beginning point for future research. 6.6 Matetika The ‘normal’ occurrences of matetika at the beginning of the adverb string and after the subject remain constant in position. The invariantly ordered elements ‘aza> speech act> subject’ also have consistent positions which can simultaneously be explained by matetika movement. To obtain their surface order, MatetikaP must raise up to [Spec, AzaP], which places it directly after na(dia) and also creates the order of the rest of the constant elements. 8 8 In contrast, I propose that the post-verbal version of matetika is a different, flexible matetika which can insert its phrase in a range of locations. The key point to make is that, rather than being the same MatetikaP that appears sentence-initially and -finally, the post-verbal occurrence of matetika is a different 19
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Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

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