On the adverbial reading of infrequency adjectives and the structure of the DP

In this paper we discuss Occasional Constructions (OCs) in English, German, Greek, and Italian. While English and Italian readily allow OCs, albeit with a different set of determiners, these are absent from the grammar of Greek and are much less frequent, if possible at all, in German. Building on Heycock & Zamparelli (2005), and Zamparelli (2008), we propose that the determiners licensing OCs in English and the sole determiner allowing it in Italian (qualche) are those that are generated in a plurality phrase. Greek lacks such determiners altogether and as a result. it also lacks OCs. German seems to be somewhere in between, pointing to a dual status of its determiners.

Published online: 28 August 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.191.02ale