Adjective Adverb Interfaces in Romance

Abstract

adverbial inflection or adverbial agreement anticipated in the previous chapter by Hummel (here illustrated with Ledgeway's examples for Italian):(4) Maria parla svelta/svelto 'Maria is a quick-talker/is talking quickly'(5) (?)da Forgione pagherai queste scarpe salatamente/salate 'You'll pay for these shoes dearly at Forgione's'The resulting overview brings to light a dissimilar spread of adverbial agreement across Romance, ranging from varieties where it is not recorded to others with varying degrees of morphological realization of agreement marks, all of which make up a system of four basic patterns labelled 'Pattern 1', 'Pattern 2', 'Pattern 3' and 'Pattern 4'. This chapter also remarks that languages that maintain forms with and without adverbial marks like -ment in French or -mente in Spanish appear to behave similarly to varieties where the so-called adjectival adverbs are in frequent use.Cruschina and Remberger's chapter (Before the complementizer: Adverb types and root clause modification) widens the scope of the book to the sentence level and also to a contrastive approach in Romance. Set within a generative theoretical framework, it contrasts complemented sentence-initial adjectives and adverbs. The grammaticalization of these structures also affects the function of the complementizer, which can no longer be interpreted as a marker of subordination (here illustrated with examples from Italian, Spanish, English and French):(6) (It.)Certo che potevamo impegnarci un po' di più 'We could have certainly made a greater effort. '(Sp.) Claro que no tiene ningún interés 'He clearly doesn't have any interest. ' (8) (En.) Obviously that the Achilles was giving him a bit of a problem (9) (Fr.) Probablement que ce n'est pas leur faute 'It probably isn't their fault. 'The structures are classified as types (A, B) according to their adverbs. The generative approach offers a description of all these structures under one label, 'C-constructions', as root clauses consisting of an element displaying various degrees of grammaticalization and scoping over a sentence. The various degrees of grammaticalization entail various outcomes. In fact, the chapter carries further relevant implications beyond those that can arise from the study of these specific