Formal Approaches to Semantic Microvariation: Adverbial ...

object. Other more complicated movement stories that would allow a moved element
to bind more than one position (like Hornstein (1999)’s movement theory of control
or a multi-dominance approach of the type that is used in analyzing ATB movement)
may have ways of overcoming these difficulties. Indeed, it is highly likely that such a
movement analysis would be compatible with my proposals. However, since the main
objective of this thesis is semantic, not syntactic, I shall not explore this avenue here.
In the next section, I present two adverbial analyses, one syntactic and one semantic,
and I argue that, in their current form, they do not account for the properties of
QAD in Standard French.
2.1.3 Previous Adverbial Analyses
In this section, I present two analyses of QAD in detail: one syntactic, and the other
semantic. The first analysis is the Empty Category analysis, which is suggested by
Kayne (1975), but is carefully worked out by Obenauer (1984; 1994), and adopted by
Rizzi (1990). I argue that, while this analysis accounts for the syntactic properties of
the construction, it leaves many questions open with respect to its semantics.
I then examine a formal semantic analysis of QAD, the Semantic Incorporation
analysis of Heyd (2003) and Mathieu (2004). I argue that while this analysis succeeds
in accounting for some of the properties of the QAD construction, there are aspects of
the semantics of QAD sentences that it cannot account for.
There is a third very popular syntactic analysis of QAD in the literature: the one
presented in Doetjes (1997). Since Doetjes’ analysis is set in a framework very different
from the one I am assuming here (described in chapter 1), evaluating her proposal is
not directly relevant to the consideration of my own. Therefore, I describe and critique
her analysis in an appendix in section 1.3.5.
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