Eckhard Bick - VISL

other adjunct adverbial subcategories, we can construct the following table of formal
definitions of clause level function:
test SUBJ ACC DAT PIV SC OC ADV ADVL PRED
clefting
predicate
isolation:
+ + () + + + + +/-* +
fazer + - - - - - - + +
acontecer - - - - - - - +/-* -
fronting + + () + + - + +/-* +
agreement VFIN - - - SUBJ ACC - - SUBJ
pronoun ele/ela o/a () - o/¬a - assim
substitution etc. etc. lhe (tal) (tal) lá
(nomi(accu- etc.
então
native)sative) tanto 136
assim
etc.
-* 137
-
interrogative o que o que - - o que o que como como como
completion quem a quem
qual ?qual quando etc. -
onde
quanto
-*
There are, however, adverbials (or what I would like to call adverbials) that do not pass
the pronoun substitution test, and even those that do, don’t all behave in the same way
syntactically. Consider:
Provavelmente ele segunda-feira não foi ao banco de bicicleta.
ADVL-1 ADVL-2 ADVL-3 ADV ADVL-4
[Probably he Monday didn’t go to the bank by bicycle]
In this sentence, only ’ao banco’ cannot be isolated from the predicate (*o que fez ao
banco), therefore it is an argument (ADV). ’segunda-feira’ and ’de bicicleta’ are
”ordinary” time-place-manner adverbs that can be clefted, fronted and replaced by
(adverbial) pronouns. Still, there is a difference: First, adverbial 2 can replace 4, but not
vice versa – the syntagmatic position between subject and predicator is forbidden for
136 np-arguments after ’durar’ [7 semanas], ’custar’ [7 dólares], or ’nadar’ [7 quilômetros] can be replaced by ’tanto’, but not
by ’a/o/as/os’, which makes them adverbials (ADV in the case of ’durer’ and ’custar’, ADVL in the case of ’nadar’) rather
than direct objects.
137 The category of adjunct adverbial must be seen as opposed to both ADV and PIV. ADVL differs from both ADV and
PIV in that it isn’t valency bound to the verb (i.e. passes the predicate isolation test), but it covers both pp-constituents that
can be replaced by adverbs (assim, lá, tanto, as in ADV) and pp-constituents that cannot (pp’s that would be called PIV if
they failed the isolation test).
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