Eckhard Bick - VISL

type-4 adverbials. Second, adverbial 2 passes the predicate isolation test with both
’fazer’ and ’acontecer’, while adverbial 4 fails it with ’acontecer’:
O que fez/aconteceu segunda-feira? (type 2)
O que fez/*aconteceu de bicicleta? (type 4)
The difference is that the ’acontecer’-dummy is a statement-dummy, not a mere
predicate-dummy. Adverbials isolated by the ’acontecer’-test therefore must modify –
or ”contextualise” - the whole statement, and not any constituent part of it - like the
subject in the case of @PRED, or the predicator in the case of type 4 adverbials.
ADVL-1 and ADVL-3 are examples of what I will call meta-operator adverbials
(’provavelmente’, ’dubitavelmente’ ) and set-operator adverbials (’não’, ’até’, ’só’),
respectively. Operator adverbials do allow neither clefting nor pronoun substitution.
The difference is that meta-operators allow fronting 138 , while set-operators don’t. Also,
set-operators forbid other kinds of adverbials to appear between themselves and the
clause’s predicator, while meta-operators (like non-operator adverbials) can be
separated from the predicator by other adverbials (type 2 and 3). A third kind of
operator-adverbials (i.e. ”non-cleftables”) are time-operators (’ainda’, ’de=novo’, ’mal’,
?’frequentemente’) which can be fronted like meta-operators, but – like set-operators –
don’t tolerate non-operator adverbials between themselves and the predicator.
For a further discussion of adverbial function as well as of lexical types of
adverbs, cp. chapter 4.5.4.
138 As a group, only operator adverbs do not allow fronting, though some semantically ”result-related” adverbs like
’totalmente’, ’completamente’ etc. don’t either.
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