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Article published In:
Concentric
Vol. 45:1 (2019) ► pp.1–23

The syntactic categories of adverbials in Isbukun Bunun

| National Taiwan Normal University

This paper examines the morpho-syntactic properties of elements that realize adverbial meanings in Isbukun Bunun and investigates how its adverbs are syntactically represented. I show that most adverbial meanings are realized as verbs in this language, with only a few adverbial expressions realized as adverbs in the traditional sense. Specifically, the adverbial verbs, just like typical verbs, have to occur sentence-initially, take inflectional morphology and attract cliticization, whereas the genuine adverbs are invariable in form and exhibit relatively free distribution. The paper also presents evidence which bears on the debate concerning the syntax of adverbials and shows that a hybrid treatment is needed in which phrasal adverbs are adjoined to clauses while adverbial verbs are located in strictly-ordered functional projections in the backbone of the clause.

Keywords: adverbs, adverbial verbs, ordering, adjunction, functional projections, Isbukun Bunun
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Adverbial modifiers in Isbukun Bunun
    • 2.1Order placement
    • 2.2Inflectional morphology
    • 2.3Clitic attachment
  • 3.Adverbial ordering and its implications on the syntax of adverbials
    • 3.1Data and generalizations
    • 3.2Towards a theoretical account
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 31 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.00001.wu
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