Diagnostics for adverbs: (micro)variation and cartography

• Grant number: 23/16142-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Aquiles Tescari Neto
• Grantee: Aquiles Tescari Neto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the post-Pollockian (1989) tradition, adverbs (adv) have widely been used as diagnostics for the position of different forms of the Verb (V). In Syntactic Cartography--the theoretical framework which will guide this investigation--, advs (hierarchically ordered (Cinque 1999)) have been used to determine not only the position of the lexical V and auxiliaries but also the position of other constituents in the sentence (Cinque 1999; Laenzlinger 2002, 2011; Ledgeway & Lombardi 2005; Schweikert 2005; Tescari Neto 2013, 2021; 2022a,b,c; Schifano 2018; Samo 2019a,b; Bergamini-Perez 2020; Groothuis 2020, 2022). While advs are important methodological tools for the theory of Syntax, the theory itself is still waiting for a set of reliable diagnoses that can more precisely define their own 'syntactic status'--term used by Ilari et al. (1990), Castilho and Moraes de Castilho (1993), Müller de Oliveira (1993) and Tescari Neto (2022c) in reference to the scope of the adv (whether the sentence or sentential constituents). This is, in fact, a relevant question for different grammatical theories (Jackendoff 1972; Bellert 1977; Dik et al. 1990; Castilho & Moraes de Castilho 1993; Ramal & Ricca 1998; Cinque 1999; Ernst 2002; Tescari Neto 2022c). By turning to a study of the syntax of advs, the project presented here has two main interrelated goals. At a theoretical-conceptual level, it aims to evaluate and/or "propose" diagnostic tools able to capture the syntactic properties of advs. On a more empirical level, the project aims to investigate the reach of these diagnostics from a microparametric perspective. To do so, we will use data from Portuguese (Angolan, Brazilian and Mozambican) and Spanish (Chilean, Peruvian and Salvadoran), thus ensuring that the study can get a glimpse of--or not, if the properties identified apply to all the languages investigated--a continuum of microparametric variation in relation to the syntactic properties of advs. The data will be gathered from grammaticality judgements, as is customary in Generative Grammar. The study of syntactic properties of advs may also shed light on the general discussion of microvariation in grammatical theory. (AU)