Grammatikseminarium - Norbert Corver (Utrecht University): Manner adverbials in mind’s way

Manner is ubiquitous in human life. When we do things, we often do them in a particular way. This way of doing things is reflected in our language. You can drive slowly, think aloud, handle things with care, do things your way, and act as if you’re a fool. The research project Mind your Manner Adverbials! (MiMa) addresses the question of how ‘manner’ is encoded in the structure of human language (see also Hallonsten Halling 2018; Bogren Svensson 2023). In this talk, I will start by briefly summarizing the major aims of the MiMa-project. I will subsequently explore the inner structure and external behavior of a variety of manner-adverbial patterns in Dutch which, to my knowledge, have not been studied in any depth so far. Two of these patterns are given in (1):

1. a. Jan las de tekst hardop voor.           (Dutch)

   Jan read the tekst loup-up PRT

   ‘Jan read the text aloud.’

b. Jan sprak de zin op z’n Biden’s uit.

   Jan pronounced the sentence at his Biden’s PRT

   ‘Jan pronounced the sentence in a Biden-like way.’

In (1a), we have the adverbial pattern ‘A+P’, and in (1b), we have an adverbial pattern which superficially features two possessive elements: the weak possessive pronoun z’n and the possessive proper name Biden’s. 

Reviving ideas in Katz & Postal (1964) and Emonds (1976), I will explore the hypothesis that superficially different manner-adverbial patterns are manifestations of one and the same abstract underlying representation (uniformity of structure), namely an adpositional structure. Furthermore, it will be proposed that some of these “adverbial” patterns are derived by displacement within the adpositional domain (e.g. (1a)) or displacement within the nominal domain (e.g., (1b)). If time permits, we will extend our discussion to manner-adverbial patterns in languages other than Dutch.

References: 

Bogren Svensson, Victor (2023). Manner modifiers as syntactic heads. Doctoral dissertation, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University.

Emonds, Joseph (1976). A transformational approach to English syntax: Root, structure preserving and local transformations. New York: Academic Press.

Hallonsten Halling, Pernilla (2018). Adverbs. A typological study of a disputed category. Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University.

Katz, Jerrold & Paul M. Postal (1964). An integrated theory of linguistic descriptions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.